Posted by Ranger Sally (165.83.4.57) on March 15, 2002 at 13:30:56:
In Reply to: wolves senses posted by margie on March 14, 2002 at 17:04:57:
: In terms of eyesight, hearing ability, and smelling ability, how does a wolf compare to 1)humans, and 2)domestic dogs?
Thanks for your question, Margie. Dogs, which are similar to wolves as far as the sense of smell is concerned, have an olfactory area approximately 14 times as large as that of humans. Researchers estimate that a dog's sense of smell is up to 100 times more sensitive than tht of man. A wolf's sense of smell is at least as sharp as that of most dogs. In fact, some researchers believe that a wolf's sense of smell may be 1 million times better than a human's A wolf can smell prey that is more than a mile away!
The wolf's hearing is also extremely sensitive and they can hear other wolves howling several miles away. A dog's ability to hear sounds above 250 cycles per second becomes progressively greater than man's as the frequency increases. For sounds below that frequency, man and dog possess about the same hearing ability. Dogs can detect sounds up to 26,000 cycles per second and can tell the difference between pitches one tone apart on the musical scale. It's believed that the hearing ability of the wolf corresponds to these.
Wolves depend primarily on their senses of smell and hearing, but their vision also seems to be sharp-at least in detecting movement. I don't have any data on how their eyesight compares to that of dogs or humans.
Most of this information came from L. David Mech's book, THE WOLF, Univ. Minn Press, 1970, so if you're interested, I'd recommend looking it up!