DETROIT – Anyone who has a dog knows that sometimes they bark at nothing. But is it really nothing?
Dogs have much stronger senses than human's do, including better hearing, and a sense of smell 10,000 times stronger.
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The idea that dogs can sense the supernatural has been researched extensively.
According to Animal Planet, hard evidence of this has not been found, but your pet having a "sixth sense" is not out of the question.
Pet psychologist Marti Miller says both humans and dogs have this ability.
"But humans judge or deny what they are feeling," says Miller, who is based in Austin, Texas. "Dogs don't judge what is going on in the environment. While our own minds start to analyze what is happening, dogs don't do that. They feel the barometric pressure change, and may react by shaking, panting, salivating and feeling anxious, or they may not react at all."
Miller notes that dogs' reactions to a change in the air or an unrecognized sound can stem from early traumas. For dogs, "sensing the supernatural is natural because they don't judge it. People could see auras or spirits, but they either don't believe they exist, or think that if they do exist, we could not see them."
"The simple answer is, we don't know that dogs see ghosts or spirits," Miller said. But she adds, "If you observe a dog standing in the corner, barking at nothing visible, then there's a pretty good chance that he's barking at an entity, spirit, or energy that doesn't belong there."