Reason Why Dogs Bow Their Heads When We Speak To Them?
We all understand that gesture of dogs when they bow their heads: they are listening to us, we know they are paying attention to us and we communicate with them, but why do they do it?
How do they hear sounds?
The structure of the ear in dogs, cats and other mammals is very similar to ours ; It is divided into outer, middle and inner ear. The ear canal begins at the ear and ends at the eardrum in the inner ear. The mechanism by which they perceive sounds is practically the same.
The sound reaches the eardrum, which vibrates and sends these vibrations to the chain of bones of the middle ear (hammer, anvil and stapes). These small bones amplify the vibrations and send them to the cochlea in the inner ear.
Cells inside the cochlea send these signals to the auditory nerve, which sends the information to the brain as an electrical signal. The brain receives it and ‘transforms’ it into sounds that we can recognize and understand.
The ear in dogs
Although all this works in a very similar way in humans and other mammals, there are certain differences between the hearing of dogs and that of humans :
- The disposition of the ear is different. As you can see in the image, the ear in dogs is downwards: it is deeper than ours, which is why you cannot use swabs to clean the ear of the animal.
- His ears act like a radar. The ears of dogs are much larger and can move in all directions thanks to its more than 20 muscles; in this way, they can filter the sound.
- They perceive higher frequency sounds. The range of canine hearing is between 67-45,000 Hz. Dogs can detect a faint sound at a distance between four and five times greater than a human being. This explains why a dog can react unexpectedly to something that we do not hear.
Dogs bow their heads to understand us better
Although they do not understand the meaning of our language, there are certain characteristics in our voice that give dogs clues about what we want to say. Dogs are able to recognize their name, relate certain words, differentiate voice tones and read our emotions.
In fact, according to Stanley Coren’s studies, a trained dog is capable of recognizing up to 160 different words; and they have the intelligence equivalent to a three-year-old child.
There are several theories that explain why dogs bow their heads when we speak to them, but they all reach the same conclusion. With this gesture they try to understand us better.
- They see us better. Dogs have their eyes in front, like other predators, and their muzzle is in the middle; If they tilt or tilt their head, they can better see our facial expressions and body language, and thus put the message we are transmitting to them in context.
- They listen to us better. In the same way, tilting your head redirects your ear to the source of the sound.
- Strengthens communication between person and dog. With this gesture we know that the dog is paying attention to us and, unconsciously, we reward it for it, because after this message there may be some positive activity for the animal, such as a moment of attention, food, caresses, walk … so the dog will continue repeating this gesture.
Whatever the reason, what is clear is that communication between animals and people is possible without having a common language. For this reason, it is so important to know how to communicate with our pet to be able to provide an education and have a good coexistence inside and outside the home.
