Does time go by slower for your dog?

Hi there, folks! It’s Arby again and I’m here to answer the question does time go by slower for your dog? The answer is yes, dogs perceive 25 percent more time than humans!

It sounds impossible, but it’s true. To your dog, your movements are slow and clumsy, which may be why they are so good at catching those treats you throw at them (at least most of the time). How is this possible?

ANIMALS SEE, HEAR, AND FEEL A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WORLD THAN HUMANS.

They often have sharper senses that reveal things humans never knew existed.  But there is one perception most of us never think about, the perception of time. We believe time is constant and linear. It feels the same to all of us. Does it?

Scientists disagree. They discovered most organisms perceive time much differently than man. An hour to a dog, cat, or fly feels much different than they do for humans. Scientists measured perception in hertz (HZ), or cycles per second in 34 different animals. They discovered huge variations in perceptions among all of them.

From rates as high as 250 hz to as low as 15 hz. Humans perceive time at 60 hz. Another way to say it is frames per second (fps) or frame rate.

To best illustrate how hertz and fps work in measuring perception, let’s compare it to a video camera. Most modern movies are filmed at a frame rate of 30 fps. When filming, the camera captures, or perceives 30 images in that single second and records it. When played back, it looks like a normal movie.

Another type of camera many humans have heard about, the high speed camera, films at a much higher rate. These cameras are responsible for all of the slow motion videos of bullets, explosions, and car crashes you see. It’s called a high speed camera because it takes a huge amount of images at “high speeds” in a short period of time.

They don’t record just 40 frames per second like a normal camera, they record 100 or even 1,000 frames in a single second. This means they perceive over 30 times as much information in that 1 second as a normal camera does!

When you replay the footage from the high-speed camera, everything is in slow motion and in incredible detail. It’s because, with the high-speed camera, you have more information to playback.

The same concept can be applied to how living organisms see the world. Scientists discovered that smaller animals with higher metabolisms usually perceive life in slow motion like a high-speed camera.

Larger animals, and animals with lower metabolisms, usually see things at a lower frame rate. Turtles and tortoises are an example of animals with slow metabolism and low rates of perception. They see the world at just 15 frames per second. So in the eyes of a giant tortoise, we move much like a fly.

The scientists concluded perception is dictated by metabolism, energy conservation, and interactions with our environment that are fine-tuned over millennia. We all perceive things at different rates for different reasons all tying back to metabolism and lifestyle.

Many birds perceive time faster than we do because of the nature of flight. Flying is a highly coordinated and complex lifestyle lived at high speeds. It’s why many birds move incredibly fast.

A blue whale on the other hand lives in a peaceful, slow-moving aquatic environment with prey that moves even slower. Blue whales don’t need to perceive the world as fast as a bird, it would waste huge amounts of energy. Therefore, their rate of perception is about 30 Hz, or half that of humans. This could be another reason they had such a hard time during the whaling era because to them we moved too fast in our large ships to escape.

That brings us back to us, man’s best friend.

All dogs, even chihuahuas, perceive time the same as their ancestor, the grey wolf at 80hz. Why is this? Wolves live in packs and are always on the move. They are built for long-term endurance and speed.

They also have each other, so they don’t need to conserve as much energy because the collective group can bring down a big kill. This is why they developed a higher rate of perception that helps them see things at a higher rate than man.

So one hour to you feels like one hour and fifteen minutes to your dog! A good rule of thumb in guessing how fast an animal perceives the world is to look at how they move. If they seem very fast to us, chances are they perceive the world faster, if they seem slow, well you guessed it, they see the world slower.

It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase: “perception is reality!”

Thanks for reading and until next time!

– Arby

P.S. I put together a little image so you could see the different perceptions rates below:

RATES OF PERCEPTION IN DIFFERENT ANIMALS