So I’m playing this video of my dog (Chihuahua) swimming at the beach with my brother’s dog (black lab), and my dog’s head nearly spins off his head watching it.
I realized that my dog was only reacting to the voices and dog names, yet, couldn’t make heads or tails about what images were on the screen.
My dog loses his shit whenever he sees my brother’s dog (Rudy) in real life. But his brain can’t decifer the moving images of that same dog on a 50" hi def TV. Why?
Also, why can’t my dog see the other Chihuahua that’s staring back at him in the mirror? Why can’t he see his image as a threat, yet, a shadow crosses our window blinds, and he loses his shit?
And why is it, that every time Donald Trump opens his goddamn mouth------oops. Wrong thread. Um, yeah. Just the dog questions.:dubious:
Dogs can perceive images on television similarly to the way we do, here is a study.
There are probably other factors involved in what you are seeing, but should not when I upgraded to OLED TV my dog started watching even with the sound shut off if something was interesting.
I suspect something else is going on that results in your interpretation but it is not due to dogs being unable to process 2D images.
If your dog doesn’t react to his reflection, it’s not because it’s 2D. Images in a mirror are fully 3-dimensional. On the other hand, some dogs apparently are able to tell that the image in the mirror is themself, just like a human would.
In all of these cases, though, I’d say that the primary factor would be that dogs just don’t care about vision as much as we humans do. To a human, something that looks human is human. But to a dog, something that smells like a dog is a dog.
My latest dog, an American Shepard, watches TV. Particularly if there are animals or other dogs. None of my previous dogs payed any attention to the TV.
I had heard it was the flicker rate of crt’s. Makes it harder for dogs to understand the picture. With the new digital tv’s. the LED’s or LCD’s hold their brightness much better. Dogs seem more willing now to “watch tv” now than they used to be.
Another possible factor- the three colors chosen for TVs are chosen to match the three types of cone cells in the human eye. Dogs generally see better and farther into the violet and not as well into the red; TV images are not colored correctly for animals that perceive light with different kinds of cells and thus in different spectral ranges.
They can, they mostly just don’t care. Smart dog Widget (border collie cross) got very interested in the tv precisely once, when the Westminster dog show was on. He got very perky eared watching a dog trot toward the camera, turn and trot away and he ran through the door next to the tv to see if he could watch the dog trot through the bedroom on the other side of the back of the tv. Once he figured out it was all a snare and a delusion he never bothered watching the tv again. Goofy dog Bear only pays attention to the tv when there’s something buzzing around on the screen that might be a bee, then he’ll go try to snap it up. He ruined the screen of the old tv that way, left a big old dark smeary area where he damaged the screen. New tv is higher up and tougher material so he hasn’t managed to fuck it up yet.
Dogs primary sense is smell, not vision - their perception of the world is very different then ours. For cats it is motion vs no motion that sets the pattern.
Many breeds have an excellent sense of smell. But if it’s primary, this is true over a limited distance and for objects that aren’t moving rapidly. Vision is obviously more important for longer distances and when rapid motion is involved.
To take one simple example, it’s obvious that a dog chasing a thrown ball / stick / frisbee is using vision, not smell. Some do this with impressive skill that requires not only excellent vision but a high level of cognition, to predict where a thrown object will land.
Oh, certainly dogs use vision for some purposes. They just don’t depend on it as much as humans do. In particular, it’s not their primary way of recognizing others, like it is for humans.
Both my dog and one of the cats love to watch TV, but only when animals are on screen. It is funny to watch them as their heads swivel back and forth to watch some kittens or mice playing. The kitty will even approach the screen and try to touch them at times.
That’s what I read as well. Not sure if it was in a book on vision, dog behavior, or both. With a slower rate on old TVs, it did not appear as realistic movement to the dog.
We will often catch our dog intently watching animals on TV - even when the animals are silent.
My question is, why don’t all dogs react to themselves in mirrors? Mine either recognizes himself (nope) or is completely indifferent to this “other dog” in the mirror.
Our dog Luna is intensely aware of mirrors. She likes to gaze at herself in the big hallway mirror.
Luna reacts to the mirror image of herself and even us appropriately. She is deaf, and she will often sit facing the mirror but respond to hand signals I give by turning around and coming to me directly. She is not fooled by the reflection.
Our other dog, Ginny, has apparently never noticed the mirror nor given it any thought at all.
The breed of dog matters as well, greyhounds and Afghan hounds are called “sight hounds” for a reason. When a racing greyhound is chasing the fake rabbit, it’s not scented nor does it need to be. Likewise, herding dogs keep track of their flock animals from very long distances, often when they’re upwind and when you send them out to fetch them in, they’re gauging how far they need to swing out based on where the sheep are, which they’re establishing via their optical lock on the target.
By contrast, bloodhounds pay NO attention to what’s plainly visible around them so long as they’re on a scent–they’ll painstakingly follow a twisty scent trail to its end even though it might mean they’ve passed right by their target several times and would have seen it if they looked up once in a while.
There are some mirrors in my house. When I first moved in my old dog saw himself in the new mirrors and barked and in general reacted like there was ANOTHER DOG THERE. He did this once per mirror and then got over it.
My current border collie mix has lived here since he was an eight-week-old puppy. He doesn’t bark at the mirror but he does see things in it. For instance he will see in the mirror that (for instance) a kitten is approaching him and will turn to face the real kitten, not the mirror kitten. So he knows it’s not another dog in the mirror or another kitten.
He will also see something outside that’s reflected in another mirror, and he’ll go to the window to check it out/bark at it. (Bark if it’s a squirrel or a certain other neighborhood dog.)
Oh, and if we’re going to talk about pets seeing things on TV, I have two seven-month-old kittens. One of them has become quite the tennis fan recently. He’s particularly fond of people who bounce the ball a lot before serving (Djokovic and others). He does occasionally try to grab the ball himself. If we’re watching tennis and he comes in the room, he will always jump up there and check it out. If we’re watching something else, he’s not interested in the TV at all. I actually recorded him watching a match. It’s not really back and forth because of how the screen shows it, more up and down, but he’s definitely following the ball.
Our dog didn’t care one hoot about what was on the (flat panel) television. It didn’t matter if it had dogs, cats, squirrels, people, whatever. No interest whatsoever.
This is like a dog saying "why don’t humans react to odors? They don’t even seem to notice them unless it’s like shouting at them. I smelled a story about three moose and a wolf pack over there it was like the boss didn’t even smell it. What are they, too stupid?
Our dog does react to reflections, even dim ones in windows. She doesn’t recognize herself I don’t think, nor does she have the all-out “I want to play with that dog!” reaction she’d have with a real pup, but she’s curious.
