Cali Kavanaugh

Is a dog’s sense of sight, smell, or hearing the strongest when attracted to food?

Dogs can hear up to 4 times better than people can. Dogs can detect motion better than people can. Dogs can see colors, including blues, greens, gray and cream. A dog’s strongest sense is smell. A dog’s sense of smell is up to 100,000 times more powerful than a human’s. Dogs have great night vision.

1. Mark off a starting box and a target box. 2.To test a dog’s sense of smell, the dog will search for the roast beef using only the sense of smell. 3. When the timer says “ go ”, the handler will release the dog and the timer will determine how long it takes for the blindfolded dog to find the roast beef. Record your results in the data table. 4. In the second test, the roast beef will be placed inside a clear to ensure the dog cannot use his sense of smell to find it, because we are testing his sense of sight. Record your results for test two. 5.Test three will evaluate the dog ’ s ability to find the roast beef using his sense of hearing. The dog will not have visual or olfactory cues since the roast beef is in the plastic bag and the dog is blindfolded. Time the dog ’ s ability to find and move into the box. Record your results for test three. 6. Finally, repeat the test without limiting the dog ’ s senses in any way. The handler will start the dog in the starting box, and the timer will place the roast beef in the target box and time the dog ’ s ability to find the roast beef using all of his senses. 10. Now repeat steps one through nine two more times to make sure your results are accurate. 11. Record the final results for each test. Find the average time for each test.

Dog Tape measure Stop watch Roast beef Duct tape Pen Plastic bag Blind fold Paper

Controls: Variables: - I used the same dog for each test. - The location of the roast beef - I used the same food for each test. changed to avoid the dog - The distance between the memorizing the course. handler and the target was - I changed the senses the dog always exactly 18 feet. could use to find the roast - I tested each sense 3 times for beef by eliminating his accuracy. sense of smell using baggies, - I was careful to test only one sense his sense of sight using a at a time. blindfold, and his sense of hearing by not calling him or telling him to start.

Sugar Bear found the roast beef most quickly when he was using all of his senses. When the dog did not have visual contact, he ran into things, including walls. My dog took the most time to find the roast beef using only his hearing. Sugar Bear would look for the big bag of roast beef that I was using instead of the target if I didn’t seal the bag and hide it from him. He seemed most confused when he was unable to use his vision.

Test TypeTrial OneTrial TwoTrial ThreeAverage Smell Only14.0 sec9.9 sec9.7 sec11.2 sec Sight Only4.8 sec4.6 sec5.4 sec4.93 sec Hearing Only29.6 sec11.8 sec125 sec55.46 sec All Senses4.0 sec4.5 sec3.0 sec3.83 sec

The experiment successfully tested my hypothesis because I was able to test the dog’s ability to find food using only one sense at a time. Although my hypothesis was not accurate, I was able to determine which sense was strongest in this test, which was sight.

My hypothesis was incorrect. I anticipated that a dog’s sense of smell would be strongest, but based on my experiment, it seems that a dog’s sense of sight is most important to them for finding food. I would change my experiment by adding tests with more dogs to see if my results were accurate for all dogs, or if different breeds of dogs had stronger senses of smell or sight than others. I wonder if some dog breeds rely more on their sense of smell than others or if all dogs rely on their sense of sight as much as my dog does. I also wonder if he would find other foods faster than he was able to find the roast beef.

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