As summer draws to a close we’ve hosted our last summer evening event this past Friday night.  For our final Canyon After Dark event we talked all about canine senses!  Dogs have some amazing senses that help them function in both the wild and our neighborhoods.

Did you know:

• Dogs can’t distinguish between shades of red and green because they have less cones (parts that allow you to detect color) in their eyes than humans do.  However, dogs have more rods (parts that allow you to detect movement) in their eyes than people.  That’s why they can detect motion better than people over larger distances during low light hours.  They also have a wider peripheral than humans.
• Dogs can hear sounds about 4 times farther away than humans can and have a wider range of hearing higher sounds than we do.  They also have 18+ muscles in their ears!  That means they can not only hear independently with each ear, but move them in opposite directions to hear sounds from different directions at once.
• Dogs can wiggle their nostrils independently to allow them to smell different things at once.  Unlike humans, they have separate airways reserved just for smelling!  While humans have about 6 million receptors in their noses to help them smell, dogs have up to 300 million!

Visitors learned about canine sight, hearing, and smell and got to test out their own senses and learn just how they measure up to a dog’s.  If you missed this fun event, don’t fret!  There’s always a fun event coming up at the nature center!  Visit our EVENTS page to see what’s coming up!