Dog Facts

10 amazing facts about dogs, you probably didn’t know about!

Dogs have been our favorite companions for over 15,000 years, so you’d think that we’d know just about everything there is to know about them.

Yet, there are some pretty neat facts about dogs that you probably don’t know about!

Here are 10 facts about dogs to tell your friends and family about.

1. Superb Sense of Smell – Dogs have between 125 million and 220 million scent receptor cells. For the record, we humans have just 5 million.

2. Pugs – Pugs are one of the most ancient dog breeds. In fact, despite their outlandish looks, a Pug is more closely related to a Wolf than a German Shepherd is.

3. Canine Clock – While dogs, quite obviously, cannot tell time, they do have an excellent sense of “relative” timekeeping. This explains why your dog always knows when it’s time to eat or go for a walk – or when you’re due home from work.

4. Buried Treasure – Despite domestication, dogs maintain many of their wild instincts. One of these is burying bones or food to retrieve later. This is an important survival tactic when you’re not sure where your next meal will come from.

5. Chasing Cars – Dogs are creatures of habit and repeat behaviors that they know to work. When a dog chases a car, the car generally speeds away. The dog thinks that he’s been successful in chasing it off, so he will repeat the behavior over and over again.

6. Turning Circles – Ever wonder why your dog turns in a circle before
lying down? It’s one of those instinctual things again. In the
wild, turning flattens the grass and also scares off any critters that may be lurking there.

7. Adopting a Puppy – Puppies should never be removed from their litter before they are 8 weeks old. Those early weeks with the litter are a vital time of learning to co-exist with others. Puppies taken away from their mothers too young are harder to train and often have aggression issues.

8. Space Dog – The world’s first living being in space was Laika, a Russian dog sent into orbit in 1957.

9. The Barkless Dog – The Basenji is a unique dog that originates in the Central Africa. They don’t bark, but instead Basenjis let out a high-pitched “yodel.” Their behavior has been described as cat-like – they groom like cats, and are known to climb trees just like cats do.

10. Greyhounds – The Greyhound is the fastest of all dog breeds. It can reach speeds of up to 45 miles an hour.

And there you have it, 10 fascinating facts about our endlessly fascinating dogs and man’s best friend.

Share this page with your friends and family so they can learn something new too!