Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath

The cul­ture in T&T still thrives on old wives' tales, and one of those re­lat­ing to dogs is that "when­ev­er you hear a dog howl­ing, it means some­one is go­ing to die." It may in­deed seem that this is true, as some have wit­nessed an am­bu­lance with blar­ing siren ar­riv­ing to col­lect an ill per­son from the neigh­bour­hood on­ly to hear that the per­son passed away short­ly af­ter­wards. Have the old wives ever con­sid­ered that the dog was not so much in tune with the health of the per­son in­volved but was in­stead singing along to the siren?

All dogs are de­scen­dents of one com­mon an­ces­tor–the wolf–and cer­tain be­hav­iours typ­i­cal to wolves have thus been in­her­it­ed. It is com­mon knowl­edge that wolves howl (pho­tos gen­er­al­ly por­tray them bay­ing at the moon) but less com­mon­ly known are their rea­sons for do­ing so.

Wolves live in very close-knit so­cial packs, usu­al­ly con­sist­ing of mem­bers of the same fam­i­ly. They are preda­tors, they form ter­ri­to­ries, and they ac­tive­ly de­fend their hunt­ing grounds. Pa­trolling to re­in­force the bor­ders of their ter­ri­to­ries as well as to scout for food are com­mon ac­tiv­i­ties in the dai­ly life of an adult wolf. Wolf pups and their "nurs­es" stay with­in the den area.

Wolves need to com­mu­ni­cate with the rest of the pack and the bark is a short-range form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion (on­ly heard over short dis­tances), so they howl. Bark­ing is more com­mon in wolf pup­pies who nev­er wan­der too far from the rest of the fam­i­ly.

The high­er fre­quen­cy of the howl trav­els over greater dis­tances and has de­vel­oped in­to the ide­al type of vo­cal­i­sa­tion to "speak" to oth­er pack mem­bers who are far away. This is why our dogs of­ten join in when one dog starts to howl–the cho­rus is the re­sult of each dog com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the oth­er.

The howl al­so de­mar­cates the bound­aries of the ter­ri­to­ry as the res­i­dent wolf or dog au­ral­ly stakes his claim.

If your neigh­bour com­plains that your dog howls when­ev­er you are not home, this is a sign that your dog is suf­fer­ing from sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety. The howl is his at­tempt to call you back, much the same way that the wolves left in the den area vo­calise to let the pa­trolling wolves know where home is lo­cat­ed.

Every per­son has a dis­tinc­tive voice and can be recog­nised by some­one who hears it. Sim­i­lar­ly, each wolf has a howl unique to the in­di­vid­ual so it is al­so a form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. As a dog own­er, we should be able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate our dog's howl from that of an­oth­er dog.

Some dogs may ma­nip­u­late the sit­u­a­tion and the howl­ing can be­come a cry for at­ten­tion if the dog learns that every time he howls, the own­er rush­es to see if some­thing is wrong. It is im­por­tant that you check your dog if he howls since many dogs howl be­cause they are in­jured or in pain, just as hu­mans cry in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, but be care­ful not to re­in­force the be­hav­iour as you may end up with a dog who "cries wolf."

Dogs hear high­er fre­quen­cy sounds

Hear­ing range usu­al­ly de­scribes the range of fre­quen­cies in Hertz (Hz) that can be heard by an an­i­mal or per­son. Peo­ple are com­mon­ly re­port­ed to have a hear­ing range of be­tween 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Al­though the hear­ing abil­i­ty of a dog is de­pen­dent on its breed and age, the nor­mal range of hear­ing is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 Hz to 60,000 Hz, which is much greater than that of hu­mans.

As dogs hear high­er fre­quen­cy sounds than hu­mans, they have a dif­fer­ent per­cep­tion of the world. Sounds that seem loud to hu­mans of­ten emit high fre­quen­cy tones that can scare away dogs, hence the pho­bic re­ac­tion of some dogs to­wards thun­der and fire­works.

Sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies re­port that the fre­quen­cy range of wolf or dog howl­ing varies be­tween 150 Hz to 780 Hz. The fre­quen­cy range of sirens av­er­ages 700 Hz which is with­in the same fre­quen­cy range as a howl. It is there­fore log­i­cal that the dog hears the siren but in­ter­prets the sound as com­ing–not from an emer­gency-re­sponse ve­hi­cle–but from an­oth­er dog and so he re­sponds with his own howl. This is al­so the case with oth­er high-fre­quen­cy sounds such as some­one singing or notes emit­ted by a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment.

Moral of the sto­ry–don't pan­ic when you hear your dog howl: it does not mean some­one is go­ing to die!