Why Do Dogs Scratch the bottom when They Pee?
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| Why Do Dogs Scratch the bottom when They Pee |
If you are a dog owner, the likelihood is that you are familiar with having bits of grass and soil flung
into your face — a development that may sometimes be copied to your canine's peculiar habit of scooping up chunks of earth with its paws and propellant them energetically into the air.
Veterinary consultants decision this behavior "ground scratching." it has always pink-slipped as a nuisance — associate degree odd and unexplained quirk of canine behavior. however, the analysis suggests that it may tell USA tons regarding dogs.
First, not all dogs perform the flaky ritual of vaulting dirt into the air. In fact, it appears to be a reasonably uncommon behavior.
It seems to occur equally in males and females, however solely around ten p.c of dogs bang," same Rosie Bescoby, a clinical animal behaviorist with the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors within the UK. The behavior is additionally triggered by a certain set of circumstances: usually, dogs placed on this ardent performance simply when they urinate or excrete, once they enter a replacement space with unfamiliar smells or when they smell another dog's poop, Bescoby told Live Science.
And ground scratching is not exclusive to dogs; wolves, coyotes and different mammals, like lions, do it, too. In fact, many empiric studies on the ground-scratching habits of those different animals — particularly coyotes and wolves — have given researchers a number of the foremost useful clues regarding why dogs may well be doing it, same Carlo Siracusa, a veterinary behaviorist at the University of Pennsylvania faculty of medicine.
"In wolves, for instance, the board packs, then it's associated with their social natures," Siracusa told Live Science, explaining the findings of previous studies. "The dominant animals within the pack tend to indicate this behavior to delimit their territory. So, what they are presumptively doing is, making an attempt to send messages to different wolves that, if they cross this line, they may be attacked. It's directed to strangers, to not animals of an equivalent pack."
This territorial marking method has 2 main options, Siracusa same. First, there is a visual mark — the scratches that the animal leaves behind on the bottom. Second, there is the scent mark left behind by excrement, or by fluids secreted by glands within the wolves' paws as they collect the soil and shower it across the bottom. "So, this can be the idea behind it: Either you see Pine Tree State doing it, you see the dirt that has been touched otherwise you smell my scent," Siracusa same.