Dogs have a sense of the basic way objects should behave, according to scientists, who say they stare longer if a computer animation breaks the laws of physics. Humans use a process known as'contact causality' from an early age to make sense of the physical environment, but little is known about the processes that non-primate animals use to make sense of the world and how things work. To better understand this in dogs, a team at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, adapted an eye tracking system used on human infants. Dogs were presented with realistic 3D animations of balls that obey and break Newton's basic laws of physics, and tracked their pupil dilation and attention span. The animals tracked the movements of balls closely throughout the study, but pupils were larger when objects in the animations broke the laws of physics.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A proposed project to help scientists use the laws of physics to view multiscale physical events with a clarity never before achieved has won an Early Career Research Program award from the Department of Energy for Sandia National Laboratories researcher Nathaniel Trask. Such work may require observations over a millionfold change in scale, with features ranging from the meter- to microscale. Sandia National Laboratories researcher Nat Trask, winner of the Department of Energy's Early Career award, is researching how to clearly present huge changes in scale. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.