By Harriet Meyers
- Puppies’ eyes open at 14-21 days old, but their sight is still limited.
- Hearing is the last sense that puppies fully develop — they can’t hear until about three weeks old.
- Puppies navigate by smell from the moment they are born — it is their strongest sense; they can always find their mama!
Your puppy can see color, but we can safely conclude that he cannot see the same spectrum as we do. If you want to buy some toys in colors your puppy will be able to distinguish, go for blue or yellow. Puppies have more rods in their eyes, which means that they see much better in dim light than we do.
Puppies are born deaf, and this is the last of their senses to fully develop. They can’t hear until they’re about three weeks old. Once their hearing kicks in, they hear about four times better than most people, including hearing a wider range of frequencies.
When it comes to sense of smell, your puppy’s is far superior to yours. A dog’s sense of smell is approximately 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than ours. While we have about 6 million olfactory receptors, dogs have approximately 300 million. A larger portion of a dog’s brain (about 40 times greater than a human’s) is dedicated to figuring out what those smells are.