Do Dogs Drink Backwards? Find Out Now!

Photo credit: CaptPiper / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Photo credit: CaptPiper / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

If you’re anything like me, then you’ve often watched your dog drink water and wondered how on Earth they’re able to get water from the bowl into their mouths by essentially just licking. You’ve probably noticed that a dog’s tongue scoops water backwards, or under (depending on how you look it).

But what really happens?

In  2011, a study by A.W. Crompton and Catherine Musinsky was published in Biology Papers which indicated that water actually “sticks” to the front surface of the tongue and just as gravity is about to set in, the dog traps the water by closing his or her mouth. As research, the scientists used colored liquid and then shot high-speed light videos and X-ray videos to study the liquid transport. So, as it turns out, dogs drink the same way cats do! Who knew?!

Nat Geo WILD aired a special last year called The Secret Life of Dogs which used slow-motion video to show the act of dog lapping. Check out this pawesome video below.

 

Special thanks to a cool new website I discovered called Einsteined.com which recently published an article about this topic and taught me a thing or two! WOOF!

Am I alone in not knowing this information before now? Did you know dogs drank this way? Do tell!

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