Comment by fractallyte | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fractallyte | Hacker News Reader

Remarkably, I actually witnessed this just two days ago. I'm a scientist and skeptic.

My friend left her puppy in the car, while she went to run an errand. I remained in the car, keeping the dog company. She was licking and biting me, and shifted around a few times, but was generally sedate.

When my friend emerged from a building at least a hundred meters away, the dog sat bolt upright, ears erect, searching. There was no way she could have seen or heard my friend - the puppy was below window level, and the car window facing the distant building was closed. My friend wore sneakers, and there was plenty of ambient noise.

Not only that: the dog became very excited, and continued that way until my friend returned to the car.

I considered that the tone of my voice could have been a trigger - but I'd used many different tones while we were waiting, and this puppy doesn't know me well enough yet to associate tones with events.

I have no explanation for this, other than ‚unscientific‘ ones...

I assume the dog was somehow able to tell that you knew your friend was coming back. It may be more that just the tone of your voice. Could be body language, heart rate, the way you moved your head, or something else.

I considered that too, and eliminated it as a cause. (I was looking around a lot; there was nothing particularly different about my body language.)

But that's my subjective opinion; I wish a camera had been recording it all...

One explanation could be smell as well. We emit tons of pheromones that we miss from each other, but a dog could easily pick up.

I wouldn't be so quick to rule this out.

There's a lot of subtle expressions and body language that people give off without being aware of.

Dogs are ridiculously good at intuition, reading body language and hearing. My dog can hear me put my socks on when i'm in my bedroom and she's in the kitchen. It can seem they are psychic. They can sense when I'm acting with intentions and what those intentions are. The dog might have sensed you noticing your friend from a subtle change in your heartbeat or breathing.

Yep, I commented below - these are very subtle signals that we're not aware of, but they can't be dismissed either.

Cars aren't airtight as anyone driving past a dead skunk can tell you. Smelling them seems plausible.

It doesn't seem plausible over such a distance. And the dog sat upright immediately as my friend exited the building - no time for a scent to drift over, even in a high wind (it was a calm day).

Dogs have really good noses and the difference of air pressure between the store and outside could make a scent move far faster than you'd think. I'd see scent as far more plausible than psychic powers at least.

I mentioned this in another comment, but one explanation could be that the person in the car started to smell different due to seeing his friend. Pheromones from subtle excitement.

Right! I can't refute that. I wouldn't have thought of it, and that's why it's important to have other eyes on descriptions of these phenomena.

Furthermore, this is something we can measure, and hypothesize, and predict - Science.

This discussion got me thinking about all the pheromones we emit, but can't really sense anymore. I wonder what sort of information are we constantly spreading that essentially no one is picking up. Or maybe we are, but only on a very subconscious level.

Not plausible for a human but maybe plausible for a dog?

Rupert Sheldrake also performed similar experiments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY

Tons of people who spent some time with their friend’s dog recently but did not observe any psychic phenomenon aren’t posting an anecdote to HN right now. This could be as mundane as Littlewood’s law.

Yes, it could be. But I consider Littlewood's Law to cover more-or-less random events.

This was a definite sequence of events: we had settled down, waited for 20 minutes, and then there was a sudden surge of excitement (in the dog); and the way it searched with erect ears, even though standing up, it still couldn't see properly out of the car windows...

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