If you have a dog, there’s a good chance that he or she has exhibited some unexplainable behaviour. Running through the house as if chased by …
something. Dropping balls at that unseen person and waiting for somebody to throw it. Growling at unseen things. Staring at walls for no reason. There’s probably a rational explanation for every time your dog appears to be reacting to something that isn’t there.
In addition to the five senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing), dogs also possess a sixth sense - that ‘’gut” feeling we get when something doesn’t feel right. The difference though is that dogs are more open to trusting what they feel and acting on those feelings accordingly, while most people’s minds analyse what’s going on and deny the possibility that auroras or spirits exist. How many of us have had a dog that runs and sits by the gate waiting for us to return home. This behaviour could be a habit simply learned through repetition. But if we arrive home much earlier than usual, and the dog still sits by the door or gate within minutes of your arrival, that unexplained behaviour could appear to be his sixth sense.
Dogs also have the ability to detect impending disasters before they happen, thanks to their powerful sense of smell. Although there doesn’t seem to be any definitive research in the limits of the canine sense of smell, researchers think that it’s anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than the human nose. Even if we go with the more conservative number, that means that if you can smell meat being grilled out on the patio, your dog can conceivably smell the same thing more than two miles away. It would be easy for your dog to sniff a squirrel in a tree, even from the house in the middle of the night. And what dog could resist barking at that squirrel, even through a wall?
Dogs can hear sounds as high as 47,000 to 65,000 hertz (Hz), where humans are lucky to hear things in the 20,000 Hz range. This means that the average dog can hear things at a pitch more than three times higher than the average human. That opens a whole world of possibilities. Mice, for instance, produce sounds that humans can hear. But research has proven that they’re capable of producing squeaks well out of the range of human hearing: if your dog is staring or growling at “nothing” in the corner of the room, they might just hear a mouse or some other high-pitched sound on the other side of the wall.
Comparing a dog’s vision to a human’s is tricky because they’re just designed for different things. By human vision standards, dogs are technicallt near-sighted, but they have greater peripheral vision than people. They are able to see about 250 degrees compared to our 180, and they can see a lot better than humans in the dark. So, if something is out there in the dark, they’ll see it.
So can they see ghosts? We would love to know your thoughts.