A new study has discovered that dogs may be able to use their noses to 'see' as well as to smell.
Researchers and vets at Cornell University, in New York, examined canine brain scans and discovered a different pathway in the minds of dogs.
The findings suggest that dogs' vision and smell are actually linked - which has not yet been found in any other species.
It explains how some blind dogs can play fetch even when they can't visually see the ball.
The team performed MRI scans on many different dogs and successfully made "connections from the olfactory bulb to other cortical regions of the brain".
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In other words, they found a link between the part of the brain that deals with smell and the area of the brain that processes visuals.
The research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience and provides the first evidence that dog's highly-sensitive noses are integrated with their sight.
"We've never seen this connection between the nose and the occipital lobe, functionally the visual cortex in dogs, in any species," said Pip Johnson, assistant professor of clinical sciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine.
"It makes a tonne of sense in dogs. When we walk into a room, we primarily use our vision to work out where the door is, who's in the room, where the table is.
"Whereas in dogs, this study shows that olfaction is really integrated with vision in terms of how they learn about their environment and orient themselves in it."
Johnson explained the research supports her previous studies on blind dogs.
"They can still play fetch and navigate their surroundings much better than humans with the same condition," she furthered.
Another recent study on canines revealed the direction dogs wag their tail indicates if they feel comfortable or nervous.
The research, undertaken at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, recorded the way dogs met strangers over the course of three days.
As the dogs became more familiar with the person, they began wagging their tails more frequently to the right and less to the left.
The study, published in the journal iScience, found that right-sided wagging was associated with happy emotions and left-sided wagging was connected with sad.
Lead researcher Dr Yong Q Zhang said: "Positive and negative emotional states have been associated with left- and right-sided activation of the prefrontal cortex in humans."
The study used a 3D motion tracking system to study how 10 beagles wagged their tails when they were with humans for one five-minute session per day over three days.
The research also found that dogs have a distinct pattern of wagging unique to each animal.
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