Global motion detection in dogs (Canis Familiaris)

The aim of our study was to determine thresholds of global motion perception in dogs and to investigate whether it could be enhanced by learning. The procedure was based on simultaneous discrimination tasks of random dot displays presented on touch screens. Each dog (N = 3) underwent 400 trials (range of dots’ coherence 80% - 20%) before (Exp, 1) and after (Exp. 2) being exposed 1200 times to stimuli with variable dot’s coherence. Exp 1 shows that threshold of global motion perception varied between 36.1% and 39.0% and after extensive exposure (Exp 2) it remained unchanged in one dog, and dropped to 32.0% and 20.5% in the other two. Dogs’ perception threshold of global motion is similar or higher than that of other species (e.g. cats, humans), which questions the general claim on dogs’ higher performance in perceiving motion. Moreover, dogs’ perception of coherent motion can be enhanced by learning.