Fun Facts about Dogs and Cats You Didn’t Know

It’s easy to think of your pet as a miniature person covered in fur. Sometimes the human-like attributes you apply to your four –legged companion aren’t too far off the mark. Other times, though, you couldn’t be more wrong. Here are some fun facts about pets that illustrate how alike and how different humans and their companion animals are. For more fun facts about pets, follow @NuvetLabsOfficial.

Dogs

• A dog’s intelligence is about the equivalent of a 2-year old child’s. Both understand 200-300 words and hand gestures.

• Five minutes is the extent of a dog’s memory. It’s why yelling at him for something he did an hour ago doesn’t make sense to him.

• Often involving their ears, dogs can make up to 100 facial expressions.

• Dogs have only 1,700 taste buds, compared to a human’s 9,000. Explains why they sometimes eat poop!

• Large breeds have a similar resting heart rate to humans: 60 -100 beats per minute. Smaller breeds are as high as 100-140 bpm.

• You may love to give your pup a hug, but most dogs interpret a limb over their bodies as a sign of dominance.

• Most dogs can run up to 19 mph, but greyhounds hit speeds of 45 mph, making them the fastest dogs on earth.

• Dogs experience similar sleep cycles to humans, including dreaming.

• A dog’s normal body temperature is between 101 and 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Canine nose prints are unique and identifiable, like a human fingerprint.

• About one million dogs have been named as the main heir to their owners’ estates.

• Puppies generally have 28 teeth, compared to the 42 teeth normal adult dogs have.

• Humans and dogs both sweat to regulate their heat. However, dogs only sweat through the pads of their feet.

• Dogs have three eyelids. Not one, not two, but three! An upper lid, lower lid, and third lid.

• The canine sense of smell is 10,000 times stronger than that of humans.

Cats

• Cats don’t sweat – they don’t have the glands.

• Felines make over 100 vocalizations, but they meow almost exclusively at humans.

• Front paws have five toes, but back paws only have four. Your cat is either right- or left-pawed.

• Your cat’s memory lasts for 16 hours, so, yes, he is holding a grudge.

• When a cat reaches 15 years of age, he’s slept for roughly ten of them.

• Like dogs, every cat’s nose print is unique. It can be compared to a human’s finger print.

• Cats enjoy hearing you talk, especially when you say their name.

• Feline kidneys are able to filter out salt, allowing them to drink seawater and stay hydrated.

• Cats cannot see directly below their noses.

• When kittens sleep, their bodies release a growth hormone. They begin dreaming at one week of age.

• Domestic cat’s are recorded to run up to 30 mph. That is 2.2 miles faster than Usain Bolt!

Cats, Dogs and Humans

The above fun facts show us that we share many similarities with our beloved furry friends. For example, felines and canines can benefit from a daily  nutritional supplement, just like us!

A nutritional deficient is often a main cause of health issues in cats and dogs. NuVet Plus for dogs & cats helps provide nutritional support for optimal health. As true “pet people”, we have used our passion for pets to produce the best nutritional supplement available. You can learn more about NuVet Labs as a company and about our mission to support pet health at NuVet Labs Overview.

How Dogs Experience the World Through Their Senses

Although we share the world with our canine companions, how we experience the world can be very different. For example, you may have heard that dogs only see in black and white or that they have poor sight but great hearing. The truth is actually more complicated. Dogs mainly use sight, sound, scents and body language. They use these senses to evaluate the world around them.

Sight

It is true that dogs perceive less of the color spectrum than humans. With two color-sensing cones to a human’s three, a dog’s eyes can’t perceive red and its relative hues. The sharpness of a dog’s vision is also lower. In general, canine eyesight is around 20/75. A human with 20/20 vision can see up to 75 feet clearly, while a dog can see up to 20 feet clearly.

Dogs are far better at motion detection, however. They can sense movement from a distance 10 to 20 times better than people. The canine eye has more rods, light-sensitive cells, than the human eye. Rods fill their retinas and give dogs superior motion detection in all variations of light and darkness. The surface at the back of a dog’s eyes reflect light back out, not only making them shine strangely at night, but also making canines better navigators in the dark. Combine all this with greater peripheral vision than humans and it’s no surprise that dogs are natural hunters.

Smell

Sense of smell is where dogs shine. Humans have roughly five million scent sensors in their nose. Dogs have anywhere from 100 to 300 million, giving them a sense of smell believed to be 1,000 times more receptive. It’s why dogs are so successful at sniffing out drugs, explosives, survivors of accidents and even some types of health concerns.

Despite being much smaller overall than a human’s brain, the canine brain devotes a substantially larger area to analyzing smells. The vomeronasal organ in a dog’s nose detects pheromones from other animals. That ridiculous amount of time your dog spends smelling one small patch of grass is giving him information you can’t imagine: the gender and health of other animals who urinated there, the critters living beneath the ground, even the mental condition of the area’s previous visitors.

Hearing

Although the difference is not as pronounced as with smell, dogs do have stronger hearing than people. Both species hear 20 hertz at the low end, but dogs hear up to 45,000 hertz versus 20,000 for humans. This perception lets canines hear prey animals that communicate in higher octaves. Dogs also locate the source of a sound better than people.

Dogs have 18 or more ear muscles that allow them to control their ears. These muscles allow them put their ears in the ideal position for superior hearing. Their movable ears detect sounds faster and at a greater distance, explaining why they react to things you don’t even see.

Other Senses

Other senses are less prominent for you furry friend. Your sense of taste is much more developed than your dog’s. Humans have roughly six sensors for every one of his. Dogs have a powerful sense of touch with many receptive nerve endings, but the sensitivity varies from dog to dog. Canines are also very reactive to body language, both from other dogs and humans. They express sadness, happiness, fear, nervousness and anger through their ears, tail, legs and eyes and often perceive those emotions in others using the same cues.

To help enhance your dog’s cell, gland and organ function, add a superior nutritional pet supplement to their daily diet. The high quality, highest quality ingredients in NuVet Plus are joined in a synergistic formula that improves quality of life for your canine companion. Learn how NuVet Plus can help put your pet on the path to perfect health at nuvetplus.com.