Have you ever felt that your cat or dog can see something you don’t? Well, you may be right, according to a new study. Cats, dogs, and other mammals are thought to see in ultraviolet light, which opens up a whole different world than the one we see, the study explains.
UV light is the wave length beyond the visible light from red to violet that humans can see. Humans have a lens that blocks UV from reaching the retina. It was previously thought that most mammals have lenses similar to humans. Scientists studied the lenses of dead mammals, including cats, dogs, monkeys, pandas, hedgehogs, and ferrets. By researching how much light passes through the lens to reach the retina, they concluded that some mammals previously thought not to be able to see UV actually can.
“Nobody ever thought these animals could see in ultraviolet, but in fact, they do,” Ron Douglas, the study leader and a biologist at City University London, England, told LiveScience.
What purpose does being able to see UV light serve for animals such as reindeer, rodents, and other mammals? It allows reindeer to see polar bears, for example, which would be invisible in regular light because they blend in with the snow. UV light also allows mammals to see urine trails. This would be helpful for prey animals, such as cats and dogs, to find food in the wild.
Dog Missing For 9 Years Reunited With Owners
A dog that has been missing for nine years was reunited with his owners at the Foothills Animal Shelter. The latest owner of the 10-year-old boxer mix recently moved to Denver from out of state and could no longer care for him. Heartbroken, he gave the dog to the shelter.
The shelter did a microchip scan and found that the owner information actually belonged to someone else in Tennessee. The shelter says this scenario is common, because often times people will not update microchip information after a pet has been given away. However, they still like to do follow-ups. The information led to a man named Lloyd Goldston. He said his dog went missing at the age of one when the family moved nine years ago from Tennessee to Alabama.
“We were moving at the time and so we didn’t have a lot of time that we could invest in searching all these neighborhoods that we were in,” Goldston said.
They never found the boxer, named Boozer, but Lloyd kept an album of photos of the dog. So Lloyd and his two children, who now live in Alabama, drove 18 hours to Golden to be reunited with Boozer.
“He’s beautiful. Yes you are. Yes you are,” Goldston said to Boozer as they hugged. “Hey Boozer! Welcome back, buddy.”
“My reaction when I found out was I cried. Especially when they sent the first picture of him,” he added.
Goldston wiped away tears as he hung out with Boozer for the first time in nearly a decade. “I’m happy,” Goldston said. “He was never gone. He was always in our hearts. We never forgot him.”
Dog Lost In Yellowstone Park Found 42 Days Later
Yellowstone National Park is known for its wildlife, including bears and wolves. But for six weeks, one animal that roamed the park didn’t belong. An Australian shepherd named Jade was found in the Canyon area, 42 days after she went missing.
“She’s skin and bones, but otherwise she seems perfectly fine,” owner David Sowers of Denver said.
Sowers said Jade ran off July 23 after an auto wreck while he and his girlfriend, Laura Gillice, were driving through the park with the dog.
“When they tried to get her out of the car she bolted and she ran into the woods,” Sowers said. “She disappeared and I thought she was gone.”
Over the last several weeks, signs were posted and an Internet campaign started asking park visitors to keep an eye out for the dog. Traps with dog food were even set. Reports of Jade being seen roaming the park started coming in. Sowers and his girlfriend had returned to Yellowstone several times to look for the dog before finding her.
One morning, Gillice was with their other dog when she saw something black and white across a meadow. In less than a minute “she started running toward me,” Gillice said.
Sowers said other than a small cut on her lip and losing weight, Jade is OK.
