Extrasensory perception in dogs

My roommate bought a book on dogs and dog behaviour a while ago. He set it down on the coffee table.

I picked it up and turned to a random page. The first heading I saw read: "Are dogs psychic?" Then right underneath it says: "Some people say yes".

That's when I put the book down and filed it under "nonsense", even though my roommate to this day claims that I just happened to hit the craziest section and that the rest of the book is "good". I don't buy it. I mean, obviously dogs are psychic, but we don't know that yet.
 
Bugfatty300 said:
I just tried dropping a small unfolded atm receipt from waist height onto a rug. I could hear it landing albeit barely audible but still audible none the less.

Tim, have you tried repeating the scenario? Maybe dropping a wrapper when you finish eating something versus dropping one when you're not eating. I'd predict the former will result in more dog visits even though it can hear them all the same.
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Man, I'm glad I read this. I'll get right on it. Eating candy for science!
 
I recently acquired a bat detector, which converts ultrasound into human-hearable sound by dividing the frequency by 10. It's really, really cool, like most of my science gadgets. If you move it around, the air currents make a sound that seems to be in the range of 20-40 kHz, and it's likely that's what your dog picked up. Combine ultrasonic hearing with better hearing overall, and you get a dog that can hear a chip bag fall. It may have made dog-audible sounds as it was falling, too.

Now what I need is a dog-annoyer with a sound in the 22-35 kHz range. I got a $9 pest repeller, but it seems to make sounds that are more like 40-65 kHz, which rodents and bugs can hear but dogs cannot. I tried it on our dogs and they didn't notice at all.

Cats have a broader hearing range than dogs, BTW. This is because rodents, esp. mice and rats, communicate mostly in ultrasound at 22-60 kHz, so cats evolved the ability to hear that range and hunt them. As an example, rats have a "distress" call at 22 kHz and a "laugh/pleasure sound" at 50 kHz. Some researchers found that you can flip rats over and tickle them, and they laugh at 50 kHz. They also have human-audible distress calls (a squeak) along with little audible noises as they explore things, such as my face, which was not up to rat cleanliness standards. They groomed my face much like they did with each other.

Back when I had a pair of rats, I got an earlier bat detector. It was both crappier (picked up ultrasound only as clicks, giving the listener no info on the frequency) and more expensive. But I was able to eavesdrop on them a little, and they did make ultrasound whenever I approached, rustled the bag containing their food, or groomed, cuddled, or fought with each other.
 
I believe cats can sense even minute disturbances in the air through their whiskers (perhaps to track insects?). They are also, of course, supremely talented at all manner of selective perception, though I have yet to meet one that can block out the feeling of a squirt bottle full of water.
 
Cats also have the ability to ignore all sounds made by humans unless you augment those sounds with a physical touch.

All this kHz talk calls for a knowledgeable person to post a nice sound chart that tracks ranges for people, dogs, cats rodents etc. Context is everything.
 
Species Approximate Range (Hz)
human 64-23,000
dog 67-45,000
cat 45-64,000
cow 23-35,000
horse 55-33,500
sheep 100-30,000
rabbit 360-42,000
rat 200-76,000
mouse 1,000-91,000
gerbil 100-60,000
guinea pig 54-50,000
hedgehog 250-45,000
raccoon 100-40,000
ferret 16-44,000
opossum 500-64,000
chinchilla 90-22,800
bat 2,000-110,000
beluga whale 1,000-123,000
elephant 16-12,000
porpoise 75-150,000
goldfish 20-3,000
catfish 50-4,000
tuna 50-1,100
bullfrog 100-3,000
tree frog 50-4,000
canary 250-8,000
parakeet 200-8,500
cockatiel 250-8,000
owl 200-12,000
chicken 125-2,000
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Hmm. The only knowledge I have is that someone recently told me that google is my friend.

Of all those species, though, I think the elephant has to be the most interesting. Communicating as it does using infrasound.

But hey, I've just seen. The ferret does even better. For hearing at any rate. Though I doubt it can emit such low frequency noises as the elephant.
 
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Interesting. So if the human hearing range is 64-23,000, what is our vocal range? Can we make noises with our mouths lower than 64 or higher than 23,000?

Where in that range does normal human speech fall? How would I have to change my voice from normal speech to make sure that my pet chicken heard me?
What would my voice have to sound like if I didn't want an elephant to hear me?

Since cats will hear everything I say, their ignoring me becomes even more apparent.
 
My sister is an audiologist, and from what I remember.. actually, I just googled it because I couldn't remember exactly

The range of human hearing is generally considered to be 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but it is far more sensitive to sounds between 1 kHz and 4 kHz.
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I also seem to remember my sister saying that the 20-22kHz range, or something around there, is what we need to be good at hearing, for human speech purposes. That range is probably a bit off as the 22 doesn't make sense in the context of the previous set of numbers.. but "it's around there"

So for ex. those who have a slight hearing problem at 20khZ or so might have a harder time understanding human speech
 
Hrothbern said:
IDK about Huskies, but I do know that dogs in general are in their relation with humans very differing from other animals, because it appears that in their own "dog" evolution, during their domestication, they learned to understand human body language.
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Actually, it's just that dogs and humans have nearly identical body language, which would probably go to great length explaining why they were domesticated in the first place. They didn't need to "learn" it, it's already practically the same.

About the OP, first a bit of jerkish nitpicking, it's not "extrasensory", it's regular "sensory", just better :p
And I think it might have been the smell more than the noise.
 
How is it explained that we have similar body language as dogs? Wouldn't the "go to" explanation be that this behaviour developed over time, after they were domesticated? Or is this behaviour that is found in wolves? If so, where did it originate?
 
No idea. AFAIK the wolves and dogs have the same body language, so I guess it's some sort of convergent evolution in social animals (though cats have a VERY different one, which kind of explain why dogs and cats often don't get along, they simply miscommunicate constantly).
 
Birdjaguar said:
Interesting. So if the human hearing range is 64-23,000, what is our vocal range? Can we make noises with our mouths lower than 64 or higher than 23,000?

Where in that range does normal human speech fall? How would I have to change my voice from normal speech to make sure that my pet chicken heard me?
What would my voice have to sound like if I didn't want an elephant to hear me?

Since cats will hear everything I say, their ignoring me becomes even more apparent.
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Human vocal range information isn't so readily available.

But it seems to be between 250 and 7,000 Hz.

A piano, for comparison, goes from 16 to 8,000. But I understand some phenomenal woman (can't remember her name) can get higher than that. Which technically doesn't qualify it as a musical note even.

As for making noises higher than 23,000 with my mouth, if you give me a dog-whistle, I can certainly do it.
 
Borachio said:
Human vocal range information isn't so readily available.

But it seems to be between 250 and 7,000 Hz.

A piano, for comparison, goes from 16 to 8,000. But I understand some phenomenal woman (can't remember her name) can get higher than that. Which technically doesn't qualify it as a musical note even.

As for making noises higher than 23,000 with my mouth, if you give me a dog-whistle, I can certainly do it.
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Well, it makes sense that we can hear within a broader range than we can make. And from your previous list, it seems we can make noises (without artificial aids) such that all those critters can hear us. Even our fishy friends.

I wonder if the vocal to auditory range comparison of humans is similar in other animals. Do fish even make any noise?

Apparently they do: https://www.quora.com/Do-fish-make-noise-underwater
 
Akka said:
No idea. AFAIK the wolves and dogs have the same body language, so I guess it's some sort of convergent evolution in social animals (though cats have a VERY different one, which kind of explain why dogs and cats often don't get along, they simply miscommunicate constantly).
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My knowledge comes mainly from discussions with one of my daughters, and she is the trained expert in my family, but she had good arguments for what I say now:
  • Domesticated dogs and non-domesticated dogs behave differently.
  • The body language understanding is not learned but innate
  • Domesticated dogs and wolves have with a certainty not the same ability to understand human body language.
  • Whether human body language and domesticated dog understanding of it were a co-evolution or a domesticated dog evolution is not 100% clear, but dogs learning our language is more likely.
Here BTW an article with some info showing differnt understanding of our signals: http://moderndogmagazine.com/articles/how-dogs-read-human-body-language/278
Interesting in it is the results of the following test:
"The experimental set-up used to test for such perception in animals is quite simple. Start with two inverted bucketlike containers. Place a morsel of food under one of them while the subject of the test is out of sight. Of course you must make sure that both containers have been rubbed with the food so that there is no scent difference. Now bring the subject in and give some sort o social cue to indicate which bucket actually contains the food. The most obvious cue would be to tap the container with the food. Less obvious would be to point your finger toward it. An even more muted signal would be to tilt your head or body toward it without pointing. The subtlest signal of all would be not to move your head or body but to simply look with your eyes toward the correct container. If the subject chooses the right container he gets the food. Simple, huh? Don't bet on it"

Wolves were worst, chimps came second, domesticated dogs had no issue to pass the test.
 
As I understand it from a couple books on the subject a proto-canid ancestor split onto two evolutionary paths. One path continued naturally selecting for the kind of skills that allow a predatory canine to thrive, where the other shifted to selecting for traits that made them more effective at scavenging among the waste generated by the early humans. Those traits; being hyper-attentive to humans, appearing less threatening, etc, 'domesticated' the dog more than human efforts did. Note that even after however many generations the traits of those protocanids are not completely eliminated.
 
Human hearing is generally about 20hz to 20,000. As people age or suffer hearing loss the top number drops.

Humans can most certainly hear below 64 hz. The current fashion for most kick drums right now is 50-60 and the sound is pretty distinctly different from a 35 or 75 hz kick.
 
There was yesterday a nice article on the evolution of dog behaviour in the magazine Science.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/cont...fbe-efbc-4980-b86d-4905eb77de30.1500526979918

"We provide evidence that structural variants in GTF2I and GTF2IRD1, genes previously implicated in the behavioral phenotype of patients with WBS and contained within the WBS locus, contribute to extreme sociability in dogs. This finding suggests that there are commonalities in the genetic architecture of WBS and canine tameness and that directional selection may have targeted a unique set of linked behavioral genes of large phenotypic effect, allowing for rapid behavioral divergence of dogs and wolves, facilitating coexistence with humans."

A mutation here generating hypersocial behaviour towards humans, would be enough to enable a further evolution of the dog to live with humans.
In simple terms: it looks like the dog made himself the first step in the domesticating process.

Another mutation mentioned could very well have to do with adapting to starch rich food (our human food):
"Our third described gene, WBSCR17, has not been previously associated with sociability. However, this gene is up-regulated in cells treated with N-acetylglucosamine, a glucose derivative, suggesting a role in carbohydrate metabolism (52). SVs in WBSCR17 may represent an adaptation to a starch-rich diet typical of living in human settlements, a speculation concordant with a previous study (53)".

Not an easy article to read BTW, but the social tests done are still ok-ish.
 
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