The dog was the first domesticated animal more than 25 thousand years ago and it is a direct descendent of the gray wolf. The earliest European images of dogs are found in cave paintings dating back 12 thousand years ago in Spain. To compare, cats became a domesticated only seven thousand years ago and that is why we have selected for you the most interesting facts about dogs.
1. The dog is one of the most popular domestic animals, only after cats. In total there are around 400 million dogs in the world.
2. Pekingese were so important in the ancient Far East that they had their own servants and were carried around trade routes as gifts for kings and emperors. Pekingese were even worshipped in the temples of China for centuries.
3. Dogs are often featured in Greek mythology, including Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the Underworld, and the hunting dogs that accompany the goddess Diana on the hunt.
4. The shape of a dog’s snout may indicate how long it will be able to live. Dogs with sharp, wolf-like muzzles tend to live longer than dogs with flat ones.
5. Puppies are very defenseless, they are born completely blind, deaf, and toothless. By the way, Dalmatian puppies are born completely white, and the characteristic spots appear within 10 days.
6. Dogs have an abbreviated clavicle that does not articulate with the rest of the skeleton. The adult canine clavicle is mostly cartilage and is usually not visible on radiographs.
7. Dogs have a very well-developed sense of smell, about 1000 times better than humans. They have more than 220 million smell receptors in their noses, in comparison, humans have only 5 million. And the part of a dog’s brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is 40 times greater than ours.
8. Dogs have a wet nose to absorb more odor molecules from the air. Also interesting is the fact that dog nose prints are as unique as human fingerprints and can be used to identify them.
9. Greyhounds are the fastest dogs in the world, with a top speed of about 45 miles per hour. The highest verified speed of a greyhound was 41.8 miles per hour, set in Wyong, Australia in 1994.
10. Both humans and dogs experience both stages of the sleep cycle. Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the book The Intelligence of Dogs, says that “Вogs dream doggy things and the length and frequency of dreams may be related to the animal’s size.”
11. It was once thought that dogs could only see in black and white, but recent studies have shown that dogs see a color spectrum similar to that of humans with red-green colorblindness
12. Dogs often circle their beds before taking a nap. This curious canine behavior dates back to prehistoric times when dogs literally had to make their own beds. The rounding ritual may also have served as a safety precaution.
