Why Do Dogs Kick Backwards After Going to the Toilet?
That theatrical scrape of the back legs is not tidying up. It is scent marking with equipment most owners do not know their dog has.
The strange and delightful science of how dogs see, smell and think.
That theatrical scrape of the back legs is not tidying up. It is scent marking with equipment most owners do not know their dog has.
The average dog knows around 90 words. A few gifted individuals have learned over a thousand — and what they are doing with them is stranger than it sounds.
The claw that sits up the leg is not a useless leftover. It grips, stabilises and steers — and whether it should be removed is a live argument.
That sharp snorty sneeze mid-wrestle is not irritation. It is a deliberate signal that says this is still a game — and it is worth learning to read.
Dogs fail the classic mirror test. But when researchers built a version using smell instead of sight, they passed — which says more about the test than the dog.
Dogs see roughly five times better than we do in low light. The tapetum lucidum, rod cells and a wider pupil explain how — and why their eyes glow in…
Dogs have a sixth of our taste buds but a receptor for water we do not have. What they can taste, what they cannot, and why smell does most of…
Dogs often know a storm is coming long before we do. Here is what they are actually detecting — pressure, static, infrasound and smell — and why some become so…
Dogs cannot do arithmetic, but research suggests they notice when the numbers do not add up, using the same brain region humans use for approximate quantity.
The old warning turns out to be roughly true. Research shows dogs detect stress chemicals in human sweat and change their own behaviour in response.