Dogs are animals that have been living with humans for around 15,000 years, which makes them more intelligent.
An increasingly intelligent friend
It is said that the dog is the best friend of the human being, however this data goes further, because it is the pet that has lived close to us for the longest time, dating back 15,000 years to the time that these animals coexist in the domestication process.
This means that it is a species in the process of evolution and that thanks to coexistence they become evolutionarily detached from their ancestors, the wolves, because the interaction they have with man provides them with a constant intelligence challenge, since we demand that they understand us, we put them to the test and favor an environment in which they can develop their brains.
For this reason, it is believed that today’s dogs are enormously more intelligent than those of 15,000 years ago, and that this growth in their synaptic connections, which are almost triple those of cats, will increase over the years.
Your dog doesn’t miss you
Dogs have very limited short-term memory. When you leave home, if you don’t warn him or make any dramatic displays, the dog will most likely not even know, and after a few minutes he won’t be able to tell that you’re gone.
The question that could be asked is why is he so easily forgotten? It’s not that they don’t appreciate us, but the attachment of dogs is based on the present. A dog can miss you leaving, just at the moment you leave, but they don’t delve into why you’re gone once you’re gone, nor would they do what we humans do: try to reason with the reasons why you left or make assumptions about when you will return.
Your dog knows what time it is
It doesn’t have a watch, but it knows what time of day it is, sometimes very precisely. Because dogs have a sixth sense that helps them recognize sound, olfactory and thermal patterns. They instinctively take good note of what time you usually brush your teeth, or what time the school alarm in front of your house goes off every day.
Every day there are endless things that always happen at the same time and that are associated with sounds, events or smells, and they end up identifying which things are repeated and which are not, and they draw conclusions about how much is missing. to make it get dark based on the last recognized pattern of close to night, for example.
They know how you feel
In the same way that they are able to apply patterns over time, they can also use that ability to know what emotions you are feeling. Dogs know how to interpret the changes you have in your behavior:If you cry, sweat, yawn or laugh, they try to understand how these variables affect you and that’s why they go ahead to determine that a pattern is causing you sadness, that’s why they try to comfort you, for example.
Why do they do it? It is not just because they love you, but because the dogs are prepared to identify the non-verbal language of their pack to encourage them to always be in the best of dispositions in case an attack by another group occurs or if they have to go hunting, that’s why , if your dog sees you low in energy, he will try to get you to recover before something happens and you cannot face any imminent unforeseen event.
Dogs do sweat, but only in two areas
It would be very strange to see a hair sweating, you will never see that image because its skin does not have sweat glands since it is covered by a blanket of hair and, like any other animal, having fur is not compatible with sweating. However, dogs do sweat when they are very hot, as their body’s response to moisten certain parts of their body and help prevent them from cracking or to promote better functioning, as is the case with the nose and pads.
For this reason, when faced with a heat stroke, you will be able to identify that the animal has the tip of its wet snout, due to the truffle. Also, in very hot situations, sweating is the way your body finds so that the pads do not burn when walking on hot ground, such as asphalt.
Dogs use their whiskers too
Although cats are the most famous animals for their whiskers, if you look closely at your dog you will see that he has whiskers too. In some breeds of dogs they simply appear to be thicker hairs that blend almost perfectly with the rest of the fur on the muzzle. But even if they are not very visible, for them it is a very important part of their body and, therefore, you should never cut them,because it helps them see in the dark.
Keep in mind that their way of interacting in short distances may not always be by sight, since they do not have a very good visual focus and in the dark they lose a lot of vision (although they see much better than us), so the way they not to hit the ground when sniffing and to avoid bumping into the corners, is to gauge the distances with the subtle brushing of their whiskers when impacting against any surface or object, especially in the dark.
Your age is relative
When we say that each year of a dog is equivalent to 7 humans, it is because we are making a rule of thumb between what that breed lives and what a human being would live, therefore we are simply measuring their life expectancy and applying a countdown to identify the end of his days. However, dogs reach a different type of maturity and at a different rate than we humans would.
On the one hand, we must take into account that, like the vast majority of animals, they can be almost self-sufficient very soon after birth, and despite the fact that the puppies are playful and somewhat thoughtless, they are nothing like human children, since they are capable of hunting and seeking their survival well above what our species achieves.
In maturity, a one-year-old dog would already have thefaculties equivalent to a 15-year-old human adolescent. However, no matter how much their intelligence matures, they will never surpass a 2-year-old child, no matter how old the dog is, although their attitude can be enormously calmer and with greater self-control than a child of that age.
Imitates your yawn to defend himself
If you look closely, it is common that if you yawn your dog does too, especially if you are in an open space and with little familiarity. This is an instinct that some mammals have because, for them, yawning is a way of oxygenating the brain in the face of an imminent threat.
What the dog believes when he sees you yawn is that at any moment you will start a battle against another pack or that you will go out looking for a prey that you have had the right instinct to recognize. If you throw yourself into that battle, he will accompany you, because for him you are members of the same pack, so when you yawn, he also prepares himself by yawning, to clear his brain and think more clearly.
Your dog dreams too, thanks to you
It has been scientifically determined that dogs are capable of dreaming, and that they do so thanks to the fact that they are a species that has become accustomed to living with human beings, which provides them with a security that they would not find in the natural environment.
Thanks to the fact that they feel enormously protected at home, they grant themselves the ability to delve into a REM phase, an unusual level of sleep for any other type of animal. It is in this phase when dreams occur, which help them to learn better, to record lived events in their memory and gradually become more intelligent animals, consolidating to a greater extent the synaptic connections in their brain.
