Do dogs use their noses to tell the time? Just one of the questions Chris Packham asks in the first episode of Inside the Animal Mind - this Tuesday 28 January, BBC 2. 8pm in Scotland, and 9pm in the rest of the UK. Episode one focuses mainly on dogs. Here’s the blurb: “Episode 1: You Are What You Sense “Chris explores the remarkable ways animals use their senses: the gateway to the animal mind. Focussing on dogs, he discovers how their powerful sense of smell allows them to understand the world differently. He travels to Northern Ireland to witness a jaw-dropping display of the power of the dog’s nose. Search-and-rescue dog Fern succeeds in sniffing out a piece of meat hidden at the bottom of a lake that’s a mile long, half a mile wide and 6 metres deep – leading a team of divers to it with GPS accuracy. But the dog’s nose isn’t just a phenomenal smelling tool – it may even allow dogs to understand abstract ideas, like time. “In a television first, we test the popular notion that some dogs seem to know exactly when their owner is about to return home, and reveal that this might be down to the way the owner’s smell fades through the day. Yet smell is not the only sense that dogs rely on. Testing dogs against wolves, Chris reveals that our favourite pets use their senses differently from their wild counterparts. While wolves trust their nose above all other senses, dogs will favour a visual signal from a human even if it conflicts with evidence from their nose. In another first, we see ground-breaking research performing MRI scans on dogs to gain a first glimpse into what’s going on in the dog’s brain when it sees a visual signal. We see why it’s able to interpret a hand gesture to anticipate a reward. “The programme also explores the remarkable ways other animals use their senses to understand the world. How dolphins use echolocation sounds to build up a 3-d moving picture of their environment, even when blindfolded. How birds’ brains use an ingenious trick to process near-360 degree visual information while flying at speed. And how some animals use senses we don’t even possess: Chris swims with sharks to test their ability to detect magnets. Through exploring how animals use their senses, we reveal how the senses shape the animal mind and define its identity.” Watch a clip here: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01qd55j
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 10:34:55 +0000
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