The ambulance is still blocks away, but your dog already knows. The nose tips up toward the sky, and out comes a long, mournful howl. Then the siren fades, and your dog goes back to napping as if nothing happened. So what was that all about?
Here's the honest short answer: nobody can ask a dog, so we can't be completely sure. But one leading explanation is that a wailing siren sounds a lot like a howl. It's long, loud, carries far, and slides up and down in pitch. For dogs and their wild relatives, howling is a long-distance way of announcing where they are. Your dog may simply be answering.
What a Howl Is For
Howling shows up in most members of the dog family, including wolves, coyotes, foxes, and dogs. Even cats and some monkeys do it. Howls are long, sustained sounds that are loud enough to travel great distances, and their pitch often rises and falls along the way.
Animals howl to signal their positions to one another, to call the pack together, or to mark their territory. Most dog communication happens up close, through whines, growls, body language, and scent. But when a dog wants to reach someone far away, it has only two tools: barking and howling.
Why a Siren Fits the Bill
Now compare a siren to that description. It's long, it's loud, it carries for blocks, and it swoops up and down in pitch. To a dog, it may sound like another canine calling from somewhere out of sight. Joining in would be the natural reply, a bit like a dog's version of calling back to say it heard.
Dogs also hear better than we do, so they often notice a siren before their owners do. And some breeds are more vocal than others. The Siberian Husky usually howls instead of barking, and huskies are known to mimic high-pitched noises such as ambulance sirens. Some even imitate human speech.
It Runs in the Family
Wolf howls are generally hard to tell apart from the howls of large dogs. Wolves howl to gather the pack before and after hunts, to raise an alarm near a den, to find each other during a storm, and to communicate across long distances. Under the right conditions, a wolf's howl can be heard across an area of up to about 50 square miles.
One famous image is a myth, though. Despite the popular picture, wolves don't howl at the Moon. The phases of the Moon have no effect on how much they call.
Not All Howls Mean the Same Thing
Researchers who study dog communication have described several kinds of howls. A plain howl tells others the dog is present or that this is its territory. A yip-howl suggests the dog is lonely and wants company. And that's only the howls. A dog's full sound library also includes barks, growls, whines, whimpers, pants, and even sighs.
Then there's the bark-howl: two or three barks followed by a mournful howl. That one is typically a dog that feels isolated, perhaps shut away without companions, calling out for a response from someone, anyone.
So the next time your dog serenades a passing fire truck, you don't have to worry that it's lost its mind. Most likely, it's speaking the oldest language its family knows and letting the whole neighborhood know it's right here.
