Trivia about Dogs and Cats: 10 Exciting Facts about your Pet

Have you ever wondered why your dog behaves in a particular way? Or why your cat can fit through small spaces without getting hurt? Let’s start with our compilation of 10 Exciting facts about your Pets:

Dog trivia: 5 fun facts about dogs that will blow your mind

Are you a dog lover? There are many little-known facts about dogs that are interesting. Here are some things you should know about your lovely dog:

Puppies are born blind, deaf, and toothless

Have you ever raised a puppy? If your dog has ever given birth, then certainly you must have realized that her puppies were blind and deaf in the first few weeks. At this stage, they rely on the heat sensors on their noses to sense their mother and locate the mammary glands.

Puppies open their eyes within the first two to three weeks. Even with their eyes open, their eyesight is still not well developed.     

Dogs have a sense of smell which is 10000 times stronger than that of humans

Dogs possess up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, which is huge compared to humans who have only six million receptors. What’s more, the part of a dog’s brain that is dedicated to analyzing smells is 40 times greater than humans.

When we inhale air, we smell and breathe the air through the same airways within nostrils at the same time. However, dogs have a fold of tissue inside their nostrils that separates the two functions of breathing and smelling. So, when the dog inhales, the air is separated into two flow pathways: one for olfaction and other for respiration.   

Dogs cool off through their sweaty paws

Have you ever noticed your dog leaves footprints yet her paws are not wet by water? These footprints are easier to notice when your dog steps on dark tiles or at the vet’s examination table. You will hardly notice these footprints on grass or on the carpet. These footprints are a result of the sweat produced by the sweat glands only found on your dog’s paws.

Dogs don’t have an appendix

Ever wondered why dogs don’t get appendicitis? It’s because they don’t have an appendix. This is because their diet is mainly meat which is easier to digest compared to vegetation.

Herbivores like goats have a longer alimentary canal because what they consume has to go through a fermentation process to complete digestion.

Basenjis don’t bark

Do you have a Basenji dog? It’s a beautiful hunting breed of dog with origins in Central Africa. This breed of dog doesn’t bark because of the shallowness of a structure in their body known as the laryngeal ventricle. This structure doesn’t allow for the movement of vocal cords like in other breeds of dogs. So, the Basenji dog cannot bark powerfully like other dogs because the vocal cords don’t vibrate ordinarily.