The Senses

There have been many reports about the amazing feats of dogs and much debate over how they are able to achieve them. Is this an extension of one of the existing senses, sophisticated natural intuition or evidence of a sixth sense?

Scientific evidence suggests that dogs do have a sixth, electromagnetic sense, which enables them to perceive the earth's tremors and vibrations. This sense uses receptors for detecting electric and magnetic fields, used by bats in echolocation and birds for navigation between the magnetic poles. The extent to which dogs possess this sense is still under much research.

Nevertheless, the wild canid is a hunter and clearly differentiates friend from foe. The dog's five senses have therefore developed for these purposes: a keen sense of smell, excellent sight, acute hearing, poorly defined taste and a refined sense of touch.  Many examples of what people call a 'sixth sense' could also be an enhanced version of one of the existing five senses. Dogs hear in an upper limit frequency of about 50,000 cycles per second to our 20,000. Therefore the higher scaling in this sense compared to humans could explain why they appear to react to stimulus with no information or forewarning.

Dogs have been known to respond in the same way when there are imminent earthquakes, mud slides, avalanches, tornados, storms or buildings that are about to collapse, thus indicating that they are capable of reacting to movements as well as sounds. Reports suggest that dogs have perceived potential danger, up to two days before a natural disaster, making them act anxiously and erratically in order to escape.

It is clear that dogs and many animals live in a world where the majority of their senses are far more heighted than ours. One of the obvious differences is that we are usually able to control our environment, whereas animals are at the mercy of it. Maybe this intuitive 'sixth sense' genuinely arises when creatures are attuned to their environment and rely on responding to changes in order to survive.