Do Dogs Know What Time It Is?
Dogs seem to have the ability to know the exact moment we go home, the moment we take them for a walk, the moment we go to sleep and many others. The question then arises: how do they know? How do they calculate the exact time and time?
This question has remained unanswered for many centuries, and it must also be taken into account that time is actually a human invention, which consequently has nothing to do with dogs. Yet, it is clear that they are able to understand in advance when certain things will happen, such as our return home.
If you’ve ever seen the film The Secret Life of Pets, one of the leading dogs will surely come to mind. He would sit in front of the front door from the moment the mistress left to go to work. If he had anything else to do, he was still able to know the exact moment when he had to be at home to welcome his beloved mistress back from work.
The question, therefore, is always the same. How do they do it?
Do dogs have the same concept of time as us?
As we have said, time is a human invention, but dogs, having spent a lot of time in our company, have assimilated many of our habits, and measuring time could be one of them.
This is a much discussed topic, according to Locky Stewart, a scholar of canine intelligence. It is also an aspect related to the olfactory system of dogs.
A hot topic on a scientific level has always been how animals manage to form memories. Dogs do this through their sense of smell. Let’s see how.
How does the sense of smell in dogs work?
Dogs’ sense of smell is very different from ours. While the human one has “only” a few million receptors, that of the dog has hundreds of them. If you think about it, that’s a big difference.
It is through these receptors that dogs are able to exploit smells to create memories in their mind. Memories of their masters for example, of people they know or even of moments when they were awarded.
The sense of smell of dogs is a wonder of nature, something that we will never be able to fully understand, and that has characteristics that we are not given to know.
But returning to us, is there a relationship between the smell of dogs and the fact that they can understand what time it is?
How much does their sense of smell affect their ability to perceive time and time?
The answer to this question, once you have read the information we have already given you, becomes a little easier: dogs relate smells to moments.
Every moment is said to have a particular smell, and this is certainly true with regards to dogs. For example, dogs can tell if it is day or night because they know exactly which scents are connected to the day, and which to the night. Consequently, they also associate the time to go to the park, to go to sleep or to eat with a smell.
Their olfactory memory allows dogs to remember the scent they perceived the first time you took them for a walk, regardless of the time of day (be it morning, afternoon or evening). They do not connect the moment of time, but the smell, so that, when it reaches their nose, they immediately connect it to a certain circumstance.
The same thing happens on the occasion of your return home. The dog knows perfectly the smell of the moment of your return. He is able to perceive your scent from several meters away, so he will be there even before you arrive, because the moment you cross the threshold of the house is associated with an emanation that the dog knows perfectly well.
We can therefore conclude by saying that dogs do not know what time it is, because they do not have the ability to interpret the concept of time. Yet, their powerful sense of smell helps them a lot, and it is also a world still in some parts unexplored, which deserves to be discovered. Don’t you agree?
