The majority of dogs do not stay with their mothers. At roughly 12 weeks, most puppies will be taken away from their mothers.
Puppies rely on their mothers for nourishment and safety for just several weeks of life. Yet, even at this early age, a connection is developing!
Do dogs have the ability to recall their mothers, as many people believe? According to research by the School of Psychology, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, dogs do remember their mothers; hence, the answer is yes.
People of all ages take time on Mothers Day to remember and celebrate their mothers because they recognize that no love compares to the bond between a mother and child. What about the relationship a mother dog has with her puppies?
Dogs have a pack structure and are very sociable creatures. However, these beings do not socialize, perceive, or recall life events as humans do; hence, they have quite different concepts of memory. Consequently, some dogs remember their parents, while some don’t.
The nose knows
Compared to a human’s 6 million olfactory signals, a dog’s nose has close to 300 million. It indicates that a dog’s capacity to distinguish between several odors is over 40 percent stronger than a person’s. Thus, puppies can detect their mother’s scent before separation and use it to identify them if they encounter each other in the future.
The ability of pups to recall their mother’s scent was the subject of another investigation. Unbelievably, 82 percent of the dogs associated a scent with that of their mothers.
These puppies were given the option of two pieces of fabric, one smelling like their mother and the other like an unidentified dog. So naturally, almost every dog followed the scent of its mother.
Dogs use associations to remember
Dogs have a notoriously short memory. While this isn’t the case for intelligent breeds such as Border Collies, most won’t recall certain things from merely a few minutes ago!
On the other hand, in 2013, Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary discovered that canines possess long-term memory. This is expressed in the exceptional recall of different experiences, such as joy, fear, strange odors, locations, and, most importantly, food.
Dogs do this by recalling associations between repeated occurrences. This helps them retain their favorite things, which means that the short time together provides the mother dog and her puppies with memories.
This all implies that their mother will be retained in their memories. If the dog is a rescue, they could even be able to recall their prior owners.
Of course, various factors will impact how much dogs recall about their mother. Additionally, how much time they spend with them. Twelve weeks is the suggested time to separate a puppy from its mother (some breeds can leave as young as 8-weeks).
The length and nature of a mother dog’s formative period with her pups greatly influence their ability to remember their mother. For example, they’d probably become long-term pack members if they’d been together for up to four months. On the other hand, puppies’ ability to bond may be hampered if they are separated from their mothers too soon or are raised in a stressful environment.
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