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By Alexandra Horowitz• 384 pages, $16
Horowitz takes “an informed, imaginative leap inside of a dog to see what the world is like from a dog’s point of view.” She adopts a scientific approach, examining the senses we share with dogs: smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch, and how dogs interpret stimuli differently than humanity.
Dogs primarily experience the world through smell. And their eyes have a higher “flicker fusion” rate than humans, allowing dogs to take more “snapshots of the world” than a human eye, which helps explain things like a dog’s ability to snatch tennis balls out of the air with apparent ease.
When interacting with humans, dogs have developed a disposition to look into our eyes, seemingly “inspect[ing] our faces for information, for reassurance, for guidance.” The way a dog interacts with the world informs our understanding of why dogs and humans are able to form such a special bond.
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