Why are dogs able to come home when they are lost?

Almost everyone knows an incredible story about a dog that was lost for a long time and miraculously found its way back.

These cases do not usually have a rational explanation. Of course, everyone knows that dogs have a very powerful sense of smell, but their memory is short and their sense of direction, compared to that of other animals such as cats, is not so strong that they are able to cover such distances. long. So how do they do it?

incredible.club wants you to know about scientific research that explains this phenomenon.

According to research from the University of Vancouver, Canada, dogs can only return home because they track their owners and the path they took. For this, they have two abilities: one more well-known and the other surprising and moving.

On the one hand, their sense of smell is trained to recognize the scent of the person they know best and who they see as a leader. Amid many smells they can recognize what they are looking for and follow until they find it. So a dog never appeals to the sense of direction; he never knows exactly where he is, nor where his house is, he moves by infallible smell.

On the other hand, they are able to walk without rest due to their strong sense of loyalty. For a dog, the bond with its owner and its territory is something sacred. It is possible to say that all the emotional motivations of dogs arise from this feeling of fidelity, and that is why they do not rest until they find their owner again. It’s not a matter of going back to where they know they have food; it’s about being able to be with the ones they love the most.

This theory would explain, for example, behaviors of dogs like the famous Akita, called Hachiko, a dog that went to the train station every day to wait for the owner to return from work. One day, the owner died while working. Hachiko, ever faithful, returned every day to the place where he used to meet with the owner, until the day of his death. His loyalty was greater than the need to get someone else to take care of him, or the temptation to start life over with another owner. Nowadays, in Japan, there is a statue in honor of the dog in the place where, moved by loyalty, he spent his whole life waiting to be reunited with his best friend.