The Ability Of Dogs To Navigate

2023 Author: Molly Page | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 22:49

For a dog who is used to moving freely in a limited area or even on a leash, finding his way home from anywhere in this area will not present any difficulties

The size of the territory well known to a given dog depends on how far from home it is usually removed. But you can hear claims that the dog has an almost phenomenal ability to navigate, allowing it to find a home relatively quickly, even at a considerable distance and in an area that it has never been before. I tried to give myself an idea of the extent to which long-distance orienteering stories do contain some evidence of the dog's ability to get home from an unfamiliar place. Let me make one critical remark right away: when hunting with a round-up in unfamiliar terrain, many dogs lose orientation and disappear.

It is very rare for a dog to stray from its owner to find its way home in a completely unfamiliar area. Some stray dogs are able to find enough food on their own to survive, and well-fed dogs can go without food for weeks in the presence of water. In my opinion, a dog in an unfamiliar area finds its way home either completely by chance, or because earlier, during a hunt or other trips, it had the opportunity to remember that the house is located in a certain direction from this hunting area or some other place. If a dog with this experience finds itself in an unfamiliar environment, it is likely to rush in the direction of its home relative to a previously known area. Luck will play a significant role in this. But if the house is in some other direction, her efforts are ineffective.

Apparently, tens, and in some cases, hundreds of kilometers from home, the dog is able to detect some smells characteristic of their native lands. However, they will not give her an accurate idea of the distance from home or information about the right direction. At the same time, having received olfactory information, the dog can, for example, begin to act in accordance with the search reaction until it finally finds a place that it knows, and from there can easily run home from there. It can be assumed that a dog that has left the house on its own is always able to find its way back from the place where it went voluntarily, provided that it was not excited by a strong hunting instinct. In this case, the smells of the area are of paramount importance, and the roads and paths along which she likes to wander fade into the background.

The spring and summer territory of the wolf, where the male hunts for prey and where the she-wolf with the brood is for a long time, is usually large due to the small number of animals that the predator hunts. In various parts of its vast territory, the wolf can easily and very quickly find its way home, and it is not looking for the shortest, but most likely the most. convenient path to the den. The area in which the dog quickly finds its way home, based not only on knowledge of the area, can, of course (if we are talking about a large and attentive individual), equal to the area occupied by a wolf if the dog has a bad tendency to wander through the forest.

How a dog determines direction when in unfamiliar terrain, something can be understood, again using the example of the behavior of a wolf. In those seasons when wolves do not start a family, they lead a gregarious lifestyle. Flocks travel very long distances, such as chasing big game. Lone wolves, occasionally found in Finland, sometimes cross almost the entire territory of the country from east to west. The so-called "local" wolves in the border areas in most cases are able to return back, for which they have to again cover considerable distances. Moving through such vast territories, the wolf probably uses the sun and moon as a compass. It can be assumed that the same ability to move in an unfamiliar area in one direction is also developed in a dog, although the breed differences are very large. It is unlikely that a noble palace dog will be distinguished by the same ability as a greyhound or a shepherd dog, which is in almost constant motion, with their delicate flair.