Dogs are capable of detecting thermal radiation. Free Technical Library News

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Dogs can detect heat radiation

06.03.2020

Dog noses are even more amazing than previously known, according to a new study. They are not only millions of times more sensitive than human ones, but they are also able to capture even weak thermal radiation, in particular, the body heat of a mammalian prey. This discovery helps explain how dogs that are visually or hearing impaired can hunt quite successfully.

It is worth explaining that the ability to detect weak radiant heat is found in very few animals: black fire bugs, some types of snakes, and the common vampire bat.

Most mammals have exposed, smooth skin at the tips of their noses around the nostrils, an area called the rhinaria. But the dog's rhinaria is damp and somewhat colder than the ambient temperature, and abundantly endowed with nerves - all of which suggests the ability to detect not only smell, but also heat.

To test this idea, researchers from Lund University and Eötvös Lorand University trained three domestic dogs to choose between warm (31 C) and ambient temperature, each at a distance of 1,6 meters. The dogs could not see or smell the difference between these objects. (Scientists could only detect the difference by touching the surface.) After training, the dogs were tested for skill in double-blind experiments.

The researchers also scanned the brains of 13 domestic dogs of various breeds in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, while presenting bags of objects that emit neutral or weak thermal radiation. The left somatosensory cortex in dogs, which delivers information from the nose, was more sensitive to a warm thermal stimulus than to a neutral one. The scientists identified a cluster of 14 voxels (three-dimensional pixels) in this area of the dog's left hemisphere, but found no such clusters on the right or in any part of the dog's brain in response to a neutral stimulus.

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