Puppies Get Socialized By Watching TV

My Standard Poodle Raja has no interest in watching TV. Dogs could be cavorting and barking across the screen, and he could care less. Even closeups of dog faces produce no results. If I try to call his attention to something that I think might interest him, he will sleepily open an eye out of politeness and then promptly go back to sleep on the couch in front of the tube.

I have always assumed that this is because dogs see TV screens differently from us. The typical screen flickers at 50-60 cycles per second (Hertz for the technically-minded), which is adequate for our eye to fuse it into a solid picture (again, for the technically-minded, the flicker-fusion-frequency). Dogs, on the other hand, fuse flickers into solid pictures at around 70-80 cycles per second, far above the flicker of the TV screen. Instead of a solid picture, they must see a whole bunch of flickers.

However, a recent study has found that puppies that are 3 to 5 weeks old can see a TV screen and respond to the objects that they are seeing on the TV (Pluijmakers et al. 2010. Exposure to video images between 3 to 5 weeks of age decreases neophobia in domestic dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 126: 51-58). The study played back both sounds and sights of people, dogs, traffic, and objects such as vacuum cleaners, in an 8 minute video clip that was played to the puppies each day for 2 weeks from the time the puppies were 3 weeks old until they were 5 weeks old.

The study found that puppies who were exposed to different images and objects on the TV screen at that early age were much less fearful of strange situations by the time they were 8 weeks old. This is a critical time for puppies, when they are learning about the world around them, and what they learn during this time stays with them for the rest of their lives.

And fearfulness can affect a dog's lifespan. Another recent study found that fearful dogs had a significantly shorter lifespan than more confident dogs, probably as a result of constant stress (Dreschel, N. A. 2010. The effects of fear and anxiety on health and lifespan in pet dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 125: 157-162).

So why is my Raja so uninterested in watching the TV, if 3 week-old puppies can see what is happening on the screen? The short answer is, I don't know. But a longer answer might be that he probably was never exposed to the TV as a puppy, and never got used to watching. He came to us as an adult rescue dog, and I have no idea what his early background was.

Chances are, by the time he saw a TV screen, it was already too late for him to make any sense out of it.

Sometimes, I think he has a point.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Comments

[jt]

I believe modern LCD display TVs exhibit much less flicker than older CRTs so dogs my give them more attention.

Another possible factor in why dogs don't watch TV is so much of it is people looking directly at the camera. From the dog's POV the boob-tube is full of unfriendly people!

There is a youtube video of a dog showing interest in dog picture on an ipad. As it sniffs at the screen it causes the picture to change and the dog reacts.

A dog I knew showed intense interest in an explicit video of a couple doing it "doggy style". When the dog finally turned away from watching the video (a minute or two) it gave me a very odd look! I had a harder time after that trying to get the dog's attention on the screen again.

[ramaraobobby]

From what you have said, the critical fusion frequency at which dogs can start seeing a solid picture on TV is much above the screen flicker frequency and due to this dogs fail to show interest in Watching the images on TV. But they can catch the sounds, and whenever dogs hear barking or any other animal sounds, they try to look for the source in the real life rather than on the TV screen.

[TopDogTom]

I have had dogs that seemed to like watching TV and some who would get the deer in the headlights look when you tried get them to watch. I think there is some validity to individual dogs ability to see the flashing lights (Hertz or flicker-fusion-frequency) or maybe they are smarter than us and don’t want to clutter their minds with the dribble on TV. :-)
TopDogTom
SmallDogTrainingEtc.com

[Beatrice Baker]

I got my dog from a rescue group when he was 7 months old. He was attracted to TV any time he heard animal sounds--dogs barking, cats, bird calls, even monkeys chattering, etc. He would then sit very attentively and I could see his eyes tracking any movement on the screen. If there was no movement, he would lose interest fairly quickly. This behaviour disappeared by the time he was a year old. He is now 3 years old and he very occasionally will be attracted to something on the screen, again by some sound, but will only glance at it. He's an Australian Shepherd.

[rick smith]

although i've never had a dog who ever showed any interest in TV, fwiw, three of my six cats are XTREMELY fascinated by TV programs that show wildlife and will sit and watch for 30min at a time, sometimes getting closer and closer while they watch. they appear fascinated but have never made any movement to try and "catch a bird flying by" or anything like that :-)