First heat
If you’ve got a little female puppy at home, first heat might catch you off guard, so it’s not a bad idea to make some preparations ahead.
Pets are learning to use technology to communicate with people
Have you ever thought how great it would be if we could communicate with animals directly? Your dog or cat could let you know what exactly they need, what they are lacking or in certain situations, they could even help you. This is something that might be achievable in the near future. Scientists are constantly developing new technologies which allow animals to "say" what is currently on their minds.
The times are continuously moving forward and we keep coming across newer and newer apps, which are supposed to simplify our lives or to make communication with our relatives easier, even if they are on the other side of the globe. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that scientists are attempting to make pets "talk". Many of you probably already have collars that measure your pet's heart rate, monitor their body temperature as well as their overall state of health, which can prevent some hidden health problems.
What about a vest or a collar capable of reading your pet's feelings? That's the focus of Anicall, who is based in Japan. Various sensors, located on a collar or a vest, can tell you on a display whether your pet is happy, angry, stressed or wants to play. This cutting-edge device can make new pet owners' lives much easier as they will be able to understand their pet's mood from the beginning.
An app by Wild Rose Cat Clinic works on a similar principle, revealing a cat's mood according to her facial expression.
Smart dog vests and collars can help the deaf or those experiencing a heart attack
New technologies can do much more today than just warning you that your pet is desperate to play. Imagine that one day a dog comes to you and through artificial intelligence instead of barking he tells you that his owner is in need of first aid. Distant future? Not quite.
For example, the laboratories of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA, have for several years been successfully developing specialised vests with various features and sensors that allow dogs to call help in this way. Mutual communication is currently limited to calling for help or warning from various seizures. However, in the future, the vests could offer many other possibilities. In case of autistic children, the device incorporated into the vest could change the children's way of thinking by simply using a human voice to ask them to be fed. Just by pressing a sensor or a button, dogs could reveal much more to humans than what we can currently read from their body language.
The scientists from the Atlanta institute are also working on other breakthroughs than just talking vests - for example a collar that, through the human voice, could tell from trained movements of the head or paw, or a specific body "choreography", what your four-legged friend wants. And in the future, we might be able to have daily communication using touchscreen technology. Maybe something like a dog tablet, which a pet could use to alert his deaf owner that someone is at the door.
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