Every so often, the plot of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey becomes a reality when a lost dog travels an astonishing distance to find its way home.
In 2015, Georgia May, a rescue pup, made a 35-mile trek home after running away during a hike in San Diego, California. Laser the beagle returned to his Winnipeg, Manitoba, neighborhood in 2010, six weeks after getting separated from his family during a fireworks display 50 miles away.
And back in 1924, Bobbie, a collie mix that got separated from his family during a road trip, made his way from Indiana back home to Silverton, Oregon—a 2,800-mile-trek that took six months and crossed multiple mountain ranges. (Learn how some dogs are genuises—just like humans.)
So how do canines accomplish such impressive journeys? They possess a powerful combination of homing instincts and sharp senses, experts say.
Making a mental mapDogs’ homing abilities are likely inherited from their ancestor, the gray wolf, which roamed large swaths of land across Eurasia, where dogs were first domesticated.
Like humans, “dogs seem to be able to construct mental maps of their environment,” said Zazie Todd, the author of Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog. “It’s likely that their mental map of an environment is a little different than ours, as it’s probably dominated by scents.”
Tracking, or following a scent trail, is one method dogs use to navigate and orient themselves in their surroundings. Dogs have a sense of smell 10,000 to 100,000 times greater than ours, which gives them the ability to sniff out everything from explosives to COVID-19 to diabetes. (Meet the dogs putting their noses to work saving wildlife.)
Dogs can also recognize familiar landmarks by sight, smell, and sound. Some wayward dogs likely orient themselves by recognizing the relative position of a familiar landmark to their home and their current location relative to that same landmark, says Bridget Schoville, senior director of shelter behavioral science at the ASPCA.
“Using those points of reference, they are then able to travel a rather direct path home.”
Calibrating an internal compassMigratory birds, salmon, and whales are a handful of the animals known to tap into Earth’s magnetic field, though the organs controlling magnetoreception are not yet well understood.
Dogs may also possess this perplexing ability. For a study published in 2020, researchers in Czechia recruited 27 hunting dogs to participate in a three-year experiment. During more than 600 field trials, scientists placed GPS trackers and cameras on the canines before releasing them into an unfamiliar forested area. They then tracked the animals when their owners called them back home. All of the study dogs ran an average of nearly a mile into the woods.
Nearly 60 percent of the dogs in the study used their sense of smell to retrace their steps and sniff their way back to their handlers.
But another 30 percent of the canine participants did something else. These dogs employed a scouting strategy, in which they took a novel route that began by running a short distance along the forest’s north-south axis, regardless of where their handler was located. Without any familiar visual cues to draw from, the study dogs were likely navigating by Earth’s magnetic field. (Learn how Earth’s magnetic field flips more frequently than we thought.)
Researchers dubbed this strategy the “compass run,” and noted that it helped the canine test subjects find their humans much more quickly than the dogs that used their scent alone. The authors conclude that dogs may pair their mental map with the magnetic field to orient themselves when lost.
“We have not yet found conclusive evidence that the dogs used magnetic cues for navigation, but this is the most plausible explanation,” says study co-author Hynek Burda, professor emeritus of zoology at Germany’s University of Duisberg-Essen.
Dogs can combine these sensory methods, too. While following their nose is slower than scouting, in some cases it might be safer. “A dog, like us or other animals solving a similar problem, can use and switch between different strategies,” Burda says.
Home is where the dog isOverall, though, “most dogs do not have the possibilities to learn, get experience, or to practice homing from distant, unfamiliar places,” says Burda.
That’s because these incredible journeys are becoming less common as modern dog breeds are bred to be close to their owners. (Read how dogs are even more like us than we thought.)
“Dogs raised with humans can form bonds to humans that are similar to child-parent attachments, and a key aspect of this kind of bond is a strong motivation to seek reunion when separated,” said Monique Udell, director of the Human-Animal Interaction Laboratory at Oregon State University.
“When dogs go missing it’s a terrifying experience for them,” adds Todd, which is why it’s important to keep your pup from wandering away in the first place.
If a guardian has made sure their dog has good identification, such as a microchip or a collar with a phone number, that can make it easier to reunite the animal with its family.
“This is the most helpful thing we can do to make sure the dog doesn’t have to find their way home.”
Source : National Geographic