The recent report revealed the exceptional ability of a female dog in Kaziranga National Park in Assam. She could sense around the presence of poachers and inform the forest officials about it. The officials there have named her Quarmy since she is equal to the quarter of Army. Similarly, there are two more dogs like her named Nirman and Myna and sniffed the presence of tigers in Madhya Pradesh forest.

Sharp Sense

Dogs belong to the wolves family and have inherited the features of wolves like a keen sense of smell and vision. There are over 300 million smell receptors in wolves whereas humans have only 6 million smell receptors. Dogs can smell the presence of anyone from 3 km away. They also have sharp vision and hearing due to which they can hear their prey from 10 km away. Thankfully dogs are tamer and can be domesticated. In another study, it came out how the facial muscles of the dogs evolved since they were domesticated and their ability to raise their eyebrows resembles humans. Researchers say these evolved abilities of dogs makes them our “Best Friend”.

People starting domesticating dogs 33,000 years ago. As they were domesticated by humans so we started selecting them according to the best-matched relationship with us. This selection has evolved the ability of dogs to decode human communication.

Mutual Gaze

The mutual eye contact has been an important factor. Dogs owners can sense the mood of their dogs from their gaze. Humans think that dogs have Paedomorphic features (baby-like) features like large forehead, large eyes, etc. There are a particular set of facial muscles that make their eyebrow movement.

However, dogs belong to the wolf family but the domestication of dogs have changed them a lot. Compared to dogs wolves are unable to raise their eyebrows while dogs have the muscles that pull the eyelid towards the ear, wolves cannot.

Since dogs are able to move their eyebrows so this movement is called “Puppy Dog” but there is no such “Puppy Wolf Movement”. The facial anatomy of dogs is like this because of the selection procedure of humans for domestication.