Most of us have heard something about dogs’ vision – they are colour blind; this isn’t something I think much about. What I do consider however is the refresh rate of dog-sight.
For dogs, everything they see or do, compared to us is in slow motion.
We see at something like 20 hertz – anything slower than that i.e. pictures per second and we see individual images, like the old comic pictures you used to make at school.
Modern TVs are in the range of 50 to 60 hertz, producing smoother, more coherent images that are closer to reality.
Dogs operate in the range of 70 hertz – anything slower than that and they see the joins, the connections between individual shots & the world isn’t real.
As to whether dogs can see modern TVs and what they conceive of the images they show, I have no idea – what is clear, when I throw a treat in the air and Maisie jumps-up and catches it, she must be wondering to herself, ‘Here comes another treat, moving super-slow though the air – such fun!’
And this makes me think a little of the movie I went to see this evening with Rami – Arrival, starring one of my favourite actresses, Amy Adams as a linguistics professor who successfully manages to communicate (with some help from Jeremy Renner)(yes, the Bourne guy) with some extra-terrestrials.
The movie is great – please go and watch!
It is all about time shifting and travel, the importance of language and communication, listening and hearing and is probably the most salient film of the present day given what has happened with the US elections.
So the next time you talk to your dog as if she is a baby, ‘What a clever girl!’ Imagine that she is probably struggling to understand you, given the rate of your speech and cogitation is far below the level at which she is used to operating.
Come on humans, hurry up…
* Please be gentle with me if I have screwed-up the physics
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