Dog's universe

[tarak]

Do animals recognize celestial bodies and do they relate to them?Are there any case studies on the behavioral patterns of animals in relation to periodicity of the movement of celestial bodies.Ofcourse there are responses and biological clocks working and tactic and tropic movements towards stimuli.But my question is what are the limits of my dogs universe.

[ryan2006]

I think animals have a knowing of celestial bodies, however I did not appreciate your comment about my article referring to me as an **hole. You should not be allowed to be on this site. This is for science not demeaning your neighbor.

[tarak]

I think animals have a knowing of celestial bodies, however I did not appreciate your comment about my article referring to me as an **hole. You should not be allowed to be on this site. This is for science not demeaning your neighbor.

Ryan

The xxx hole can be anything,I sincerely apologize if it is out of spirit.

[GAHD]

I can't say I know much on the subject. What makes you ask the question?

[Boerseun]

My dog's universe is a concatenation of smells.

 

Mostly, the smell of his butt, and the smells of all the other dogs in the neighbourhood's butts. His mental picture of the world is a collage of memorable (and not-so-memorable) buttsniffs.

 

I think he'll only be interested in celestial objects if they have butts.

 

But then again, it has been demonstrated that some migratory birds, released inside planetariums, will fly in circles if the picture of the sky is rotated, indicating that they (not all species, though) do seem to navigate using stars. This means also that they have to compensate for time, but that's beside the point. The mere fact that they fly by following the stars means that they do attach some value to them. It would be interesting to find whether their knowledge of the sky-map is genetic, or whether they just follow the other birds on the migration and eventually figure it out for themselves? Can't be too hard to test, just raise a bird in isolation and see if it will migrate in the right direction...

[tarak]

I can't say I know much on the subject. What makes you ask the question?

 

An animal as an observer looking at the moon or sun and understanding it as a source of light or another kind of circular glow in the heavens above.The phototactic/tropic/nastic movements exhibited from lower organisms to migratory birds and several animals in the wild is a common phenomenon.But when we observe domestic animals living in a human generated enviroment, they should have certain instinct that differentiates the moon from a streetlight.

[tarak]

My dog's universe is a concatenation of smells.

 

Mostly, the smell of his butt, and the smells of all the other dogs in the neighbourhood's butts. His mental picture of the world is a collage of memorable (and not-so-memorable) buttsniffs.

 

I think he'll only be interested in celestial objects if they have butts.

 

But then again, it has been demonstrated that some migratory birds, released inside planetariums, will fly in circles if the picture of the sky is rotated, indicating that they (not all species, though) do seem to navigate using stars. This means also that they have to compensate for time, but that's beside the point. The mere fact that they fly by following the stars means that they do attach some value to them. It would be interesting to find whether their knowledge of the sky-map is genetic, or whether they just follow the other birds on the migration and eventually figure it out for themselves? Can't be too hard to test, just raise a bird in isolation and see if it will migrate in the right direction...

 

Dogs have great smelling sense/Some moths can sense their partners miles away/Birds/ have great olfactory and visual senses.Do you think most animals have a stonger sense of all sensory faculties compared to human.

[Tormod]

Moved to biology on tarak's request.

[Turtle]

Dogs have great smelling sense/Some moths can sense their partners miles away/Birds/ have great olfactory and visual senses.Do you think most animals have a stonger sense of all sensory faculties compared to human.

 

___In a word, no. Sensorial input is only as good as the brain processing it. By most accounts, we humans have the penultimate brain & it makes sense we then generate more efficient output with less/narrower input. Humans currently train dogs to smell out cancer, but not the reverse.

___We do have a higher sense of smell than realized; some native people in the Amazon recognize the smell of urine from dozens of animal species in the forest, & humans react subconciously to pherrmones.

___As to dogs butt-sniffing, an interesting question is then "when did humans (for the most part) stop butt-sniffing?".:hihi:

[InfiniteNow]

___As to dogs butt-sniffing, an interesting question is then "when did humans (for the most part) stop butt-sniffing?".:hihi:

We stopped? Oh... uhmm. Pretend I didn't say that. I was just, umm, being, uhmmmm, rhetorical. Yeah, rhetorical, that's the ticket!

 

:lol:

[tarak]

___In a word, no. Sensorial input is only as good as the brain processing it. By most accounts, we humans have the penultimate brain & it makes sense we then generate more efficient output with less/narrower input. Humans currently train dogs to smell out cancer, but not the reverse.

 

More the number of sensory cell receptors in the particular tissue,higher must be the perception of the smell or any sense...ofcourse also depends on waht kind of receptors these are ,and their density...If the input perception is itself less lost during the course of evolution.....then processing doesnot come into picture...Another interesting point is if the processing is highly efficient can it be more creative???Can we imagine new smells I mean??

[InfiniteNow]

The three issues at play here, which must all be harmonized in perception, are:

 

Scent at the point of reception. When the molecule, atom, whatever hits the cell and makes it fire. How many of those cells there are, the density, and their layout. For example, if oriented one way, they miss stimuli coming from the perpendicular. How is the region organized and how acute is it?

 

Next is interpretation of said scent. What is the cascade of of cells firing. How is the scent interpreted before it even reaches awareness (which dogs have too ya know). You could have the most amazing sensory "panel" there is, but if you can't do anything with the incoming data, it won't do you a bit of good. It's a bit like having a satellite dish and beaming it's signal into a basic 4-function calculator... gonna lose some important data if you don't have enough processing power.

 

Last, the ability to anticipate scent. To actively search it out based on the memory we have of it. This is partly related to the first two, because it involves interpretation as well as recognition with potentially very low resolution.

 

 

I'd say that both Turtle and tarak are correct, just in different ways.

[InfiniteNow]

...Another interesting point is if the processing is highly efficient can it be more creative???Can we imagine new smells I mean??

Although still part of the olfactory system, I'd be led to believe that imagining new things and being more creative has more to do with taste than smell. Although the two are highly interrelated, smell is a direct interpretation of some stimulus, whereas taste is subjective.

[tarak]

Imagine a poor detective dog which is bombarded by a million smells on its way to its target ...but it will recognise the smell which it is trained for...

 

One interesting area is the "Intelligent electronic nose" kind of equipment that is in research stages,which mimics mammalian olfactory system and can discriminate smells.This is supposed to generate several applications like disease diganostics.

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002741.html