Rosie has been crushing the Bluey coverage around here, and don’t worry — she is still the de facto Bluey reporter! I’m just stepping in for this very specific angle: what do dogs think of Bluey? Apparently, they love it! Four paws!! No really, those crafty Australian animators have locked down not only the children demographic, but the canine as well, to the point where the show has been dubbed “dog entertainment.” People Mag spoke to Amanda Farah — a National Training & Behavior Coordinator for Best Friends Animal Society who’s earning a master’s in Animal Welfare & Behavior at Penn Vet — to break down the likely reasons why pups are captivated by Bluey:
Canine coded colors: One of the most popular theories about why dogs love Bluey is its blue-and-yellow heavy color palette. … “They can discriminate blue and yellow,” Farah says. “Maybe they don’t see blue as the blue we see it or yellow as the yellow we see it, but they can tell the difference between those. … We don’t know for sure, but a lot of people sure do latch onto this theory that they can see in blue and yellow,” Farah says. “We do see some evidence that when we present them with toys or videos in those colors that they seem really drawn to them.”
Constant movement & predictable patterns: “We know in studies [that have been done] that a lot of dogs will just tune out completely from the video if there’s not movement involved,” Farah says. “When I watch Bluey, all I see is the movement. It’s high-contrast movement, so the lines are sharp and crisp, which probably helps because dog’s visual acuity is not as sharp as ours.” Along with constant movement, Farah notes that there is occasionally “predictable movement,” on the show “which dogs love.” She adds that dogs can typically find these patterns “very soothing.”
Music to their floppy ears: As one could have guessed, the high-pitched sounds on the show — from Bluey and her friends’ voices to all the instrument noises featured on the pilot episode “Magic Xylophone” — certainly piques the interest of dogs when they’re watching. “There’s a lot of research that shows that dogs are more apt to tune in to high-pitched voices,” Farah says. … “A lot of us tend to talk to our dogs in those high pitches [and that communication is] usually positive.”
Doggies like Aussie accents? Another reason why dogs in the U.S. could be interested in Bluey is that the accents of the Australian voice actors may be unfamiliar to them. Though she hasn’t reviewed any exact studies on the effect of foreign-sounding accents on dogs, she notes that in her personal experience, her dogs have shown an interest in bilingual ads. “I think it’s just because they don’t recognize it and it’s not a cadence that they’re as familiar with,” Farah explains.
Seven minutes is heaven: Dogs have a short attention span, so Bluey’s kid-friendly seven-minute-long episodes may be the right length for Fido as well. “When we’re doing training with [dogs], I’m typically recommending that people’s training sessions [are] not more than a couple minutes,” Farah says. “We know that dogs seem to forget things that have happened if it’s [been] more than three or four minutes,” Farah continues — and the constant motion of Bluey’s animation may grab them a bit longer than that.
It’s about dogs, duh! Perhaps one of the most obvious reasons dogs love watching Bluey is that … it’s all about dogs! “There is research that says that dogs seem to discriminate dogs on video,” Farah says. “They recognize dog shapes, which is probably not surprising.” Even though the show features cartoon dogs, Farah says they can still recognize the shapes. “[Dogs] often mistake silhouettes of dogs for real dogs,” Farah notes. “The way that Bluey is drawn, it’s a silhouette of a dog. The stand-up ears are really easy to distinguish.”
In the year of our lord Bluey 2024, how is there not more existing, definitive research on canine accent preferences?! Hmmm?? Young people of today thinking about careers in science — heed this call! LOL. I know Farah’s point was about the accent being different, but it still made me laugh that People included it. I thought all the other explanations checked out, though. We know that our pups like the high-pitched sounds of baby talk, and I can personally vouch for dogs recognizing other dogs on TV, based on **checks notes** every single time I’ve watched TV with My Girl in the room. Once she was in the middle of yelling at a dog in a commercial, and when the commercial ended, My Girl ran out of the room trying to chase down the TV dog. “I don’t care if you’re not real, I’m not done yelling at you!” As for whether My Girl herself is a fan of Bluey… she could not be bothered to even face the TV when I put it on for her. I’ve seen her be rapt by Drag Race and Lawrence O’Donnell, but she turned her snout up and away from Bluey. Maybe it’s the accents.
photos via Instagram
Dog content is my favorite content! <3
[as long as it doesn't contain gov-from-hell Kristi 😨 i can't even read those posts]
“Four paws!!” LMAO!
“Dog shapes” made me giggle. I love that they found an actual dog scientist to interview.
There are moments in Bluey when the dogs all of the sudden have real barks / real dog noises or behaviors. Like in “Pool,” when Bandit shakes the water off, or in “Takeaway,” when Bingo fetches the newspaper and yips, and when the German shepherd mom says “out, out” in “Pass the Parcel.” I wonder if dogs notice those moments too!
I learned so much! Baby talk to dogs is for their benefit! They like blue & yellow. Probably. We’re not sure. They don’t really see blue & yellow the way we see blue & yellow. They like dog-shape things. Probably, they can’t see shapes the way we do. Love it, love Bluey–the sweetest cartoon in a good long while, love videos of dogs watching Bluey. I think we needed this palette cleanser after the horror of the Kristi Noem article.
So cute. I love this story. My late dog enjoyed natural documentaries and could pick out the animals. I don’t think he perceived cartoons however.