Thought you knew a lot about dogs? Read these interesting facts and think again.
All dogs are probably descended from a small grey wolf. They were first domesticated by people in the Palaeolithic Age and first seemed to have appeared in Eurasia about 13 000 years ago.
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Dingos are not native to Australia – they were introduced by the first immigrants thousands of years ago,
Dogs are pack animals and live according to a strict hierarchical system. Even in a domestic situation, where there is more than one dog, one will be the 'top' dog.
Dogs are intensely territorial, which is why it is easy to train them as guard dogs.
Dogs have better hearing than humans and cats. They can register sounds of 35,000 vibrations a second (compared to our 20,000 and a cat's 25,000).
The tallest dogs are the Great Dane and the Irish Wolfhound. The smallest dogs are the Chihuahua, the Yorkshire Terrier and the Toy Poodle.
Man has about 5 million smelling receptors, but that's not much when compared to to some dog breeds: A Dachshund has 125 million, whilst an Alsatian has 220 million.
Several different dogs played the part of the dog "Lassie" in several films.
The fastest dogs on earth are greyhounds, which can reach a top speed of approximately 72km/h.
The Poodle haircut, funny as it may seem, originally had a purpose. It was meant to improve the dog's swimming abilities as a retriever, and the pom-poms were left in place to warm their joints.
At age one year, a dog is the equivalent of 16 human years; at two dog years, they are 24 human years; at 3 dog years, 30 human years; and for every dog year after that, add 4 human years.
Survivors of the Titanic included two dogs: a Pekingese and a Pomeranian.
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