Dogs share the same basic senses with humans: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. It is the level of their senses that is different

Sight
Colors: It was once believed that dogs are “color-blind” – only able to see in black and white, but scientific studies have found otherwise. Dogs can see in color – blue, green, greys, and of course black and white.

Detecting Motion – dogs “motion detecting” ability is excellent; they are able to detect a cat up a tree at a much greater distance than we can!
Their night vision is typically much better than ours – dogs have an additional reflective layer in the eye called the tapetum lucidum, which reflects light back into the receptor cells of the eye, this not only increases their night vision, but gives them that spooky appearance of eyes glowing in the dark.

Hearing
When your dog is barking like crazy, keep in mind their sense of hearing. Your dog may be listening to something that you can’t hear that is upsetting to him or her – it could very well be someone breaking into your house that he/she is trying to alert you to.

Dogs can hear at four times the distance humans can – this means that you may hear something from a 100 yards away while your dog ccan hear from a quarter mile away. Their ears are better designed to gather more of the available sound waves; they have 15 different muscles that move their ears in all directions; they can move one ear at a time and independently of the other to absorb even more information.

Touch
Dogs have a well-developed sense of touch under all that fur, although the sense of touch is much less sophisticated than a humans. Puppies are born with sensory receptors in their faces so they can find mama even if they are separated before they open their eyes.

They can also sense a touch everywhere on their bodies, much like humans can. One reason your dog flops down on the couch next to you and tries to snuggle up even on a hot day is because he likes the comforting feeling that you are right beside him/her.

Smell
Humans ability to smell things doesn’t even come close to a dogs sense of smell. It has been estimated that a dogs sense of smell is 100,000 times more powerful than a humans. Scientists have determined that a human has about 40 million olfactory receptors and a dog has 2 billion. This is part of the reason that dogs make such great trackers; they can trace scents across all sorts of distractions.

Dogs use their keen sense of smell as a communications tool too; when they are running around with their nose to the ground sniffing everything in sight, they are reading the calling cards of everyone who has been there before them – dogs, humans, cats, squirrels, anyone or anything else. They are so focussed on the smells that they may not pay attention to you while they are intent on the a recent ‘history’ of the area they are in,

Taste
As with humans, a dogs sense of taste is closely linked to the sense of smell; the main difference is that humans won’t eat something if it smells bad, but dogs are the opposite, the smellier the better.

While humans won’t eat something that doesn’t look appealing, dogs are more concerned with the smell, than the taste. Most dogs will gobble the food down food without chewing it, let alone tasting it. This is why when we clean out our refrigerators our dogs think it is time for a treat.

Now you should have a better understanding when your dog barking for what you may think is no reason or ignoring you while he is investigating a new area, he/she is just responding to a different level of “sense” than you are. Take a moment to try and figure out what is triggering his behavior before you react. Your dog may be trying to tell you something!
Provided by ArticleGOLD