Have you ever seen a dog watching television? Whether dogs show an interest in TV depends on their individual personalities and breed mix.
Based on Nicholas Dodman, a veterinary behaviorist at Tufts University, dogs can certainly perceive images and sounds coming from televisions. How they react to them is another matter!
When dogs watch TV, what do they see?
A 2013 study published in the journal Animal perception found that dogs could visually recognize images of other dogs among images of other people and animals. They can also recognize animals on the screen and familiar sounds like barking coming from the set.
However, their unique vision means that although they can recognize images on television, they see them slightly differently than we do. When dogs watch TV, they perceive colors only on the yellow and blue spectrum. They have dichroic vision while humans see the full range of colors. For dogs, every color is yellow, blue, brown, or gray.
To give you an idea of what the dogs see, the following photo was run over a Dog Vision Image Processing Tool. Notice how the multicolored balls all appear yellow, blue, or gray to a dog.
Despite poor color perception, dogs capture moving images faster than humans. This may explain why modern TVs are more likely to grab their attention.
Older sets show less fps. According to Dodman, this sounds like a blinking dog like a “1920s movie.” HDTV, on the other hand, has a much higher number of frames per second, making it a lot easier for dogs to watch TV.
Personality makes the difference.
Beyond biology, whether dogs watch TV and respond to its content depends largely on their individual personalities.
“Different dogs, like people, have different personalities,” says Dodman National Geography. “Some are territorial, some are not. Some like people, some hate people. Some are predatory, some are not. Some are self-righteous, some are shy. It takes all kinds of dogs to make the world go round.”
When dogs watch TV, their reactions can range from tilting their heads curiously to barking and jumping at the screen. Dodman points out that many dogs “have been desensitized to television. When they see a dog [on TV]surname [may] thought, ‘Those guys are just hanging out on television. They never really walk around. ‘”
Alike may also play a role in how dogs respond to television.
Hounds have scents and are less likely to be interested in moving images. Herding dogs, on the other hand, are more likely to show interest in the action on set because they were bred to track subtle movements.
DogTV entertains baby mice using science.
Dodman is the main scientist behind DogTV, an HDTV channel dedicated to keeping baby mice entertained while their humans are away. Not only does the program have a higher fps, its colors are set to match the dog’s yellow-blue image spectrum.
Pawnbrokers can choose from different programmed “modes”, such as relaxation, stimulation, and exposure. Relax mode features soft music, muted colors and dogs lounging on the beach. Stimulating images show baby mice splashing into the pool, chasing balls and bouncing around in the grass. Finally, dogs in training can benefit from Exposure mode’s ringing doorbells and home-related situations.
Dodson says television will eventually cease to be the wallpaper for most dogs. That, though, is “better than spinning the wheel all day while your employer is away.”
Do your dogs watch TV? Share your funniest stories and cutest photos in the comments!
H/T to National Geography
