A question about dogs and sirens

[Mister_Penetrator]

My question is about dogs howling during siren tests. What is it that sirens make dogs howl and/or why do they howl?

[ThunderboltFreak]

They howl becuase they thing the sirens are other dogs howling too. Basically, the dog howling at the siren thinks he is howling at another dog, coyote, or wolf. These animals do this in the wild to communicate with each other.

[3t22]

I've been told although I'm not too sure on just how true this is, that they howl because it hurts their ears. My threory is because it sounds similar to the howl of a wolf, and they're just responding to "the big wolf".

[Robert Gift]

Fortunately, it does not hurt their ears.
Otherwise, they would hurt when they bark or howl among themselves.
dB is much higher from a dog next to you than from a siren in the distance.
(You'd be amazed at the dB level at the ear from a shower head!)

To canines, sirens sound similar enough to howling to elicit a response.
We induced several wolf packs to howl by "howling" ourselves. It was interesting to discover how many different packs there were in the area.

[kagome122885]

They howl becuase they thing the sirens are other dogs howling too. Basically, the dog howling at the siren thinks he is howling at another dog, coyote, or wolf. These animals do this in the wild to communicate with each other.

They think that the siren sounds like another dog howling. They don't know it's a siren!

[ThunderboltFreak]

I didn't say that. I said that they think they are communicating with another dog, coyote, or wolf. Nowhere in that sentence did I say they new it was a siren.

[SirenEnthusiast360]

Weird, one of my 2 cats reacts when a siren test happens, She is a blue point siamese.

[Robert Gift]

What does she do?
Are you close to the siren?
Is it an electronic siren?
If so, could it have an inaudible high frequency to which she reacts?

[LtKernelPanic]

Our dog is 8 years old and has never howled when the sirens have went off for a warning or monthly test. He's never howled when the fire engine from the station a few blocks from us goes by either. Then again he barks at everything else that moves so maybe he's just being lazy.

[kagome122885]

Speaking of dogs and sirens, here are some videos that I found a while ago of a dog howling at a siren. I am not going to tell what kind of siren is in this video, because we already know what kind of siren this is!

Here is the first clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYM9LZJ-lbM

The second clip, you can hear the siren a little better - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xaw_iCdRH7I