Animals, Plants & Seasons 3-minute video · ages 4-8 · free coloring page
Why does my dog pant?
After a dog runs and plays, it opens its mouth, hangs out its tongue, and breathes very fast. Huff, huff, huff! Why does a dog pant?
3 min
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Free coloring page
The scene from the video as a coloring page, plus the three-sentence answer, the experiment, and a QR code back to this page. One sheet, US Letter, black and white.
The answer in three parts
Why?
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A running dog gets hot inside, and it can't sweat like you.
You cool down by sweating. But a dog's body is covered in fur, and it has hardly any sweat glands. Just a few, on the bottom of its paws.
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So a dog uses its wet tongue.
When a dog pants, air rushes in and out, very fast, over its wet tongue. Each breath carries water bits away, and every water bit takes a little bit of heat with it. That is evaporation, the same trick as sweat!
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A cool tongue cools the whole dog.
The tongue is full of warm blood. As the tongue cools, the blood inside it cools too. Then that cooler blood travels around the body.
For grown-ups: People sweat, dogs pant, and both use the very same trick: water flying away carries the heat off. All that panting uses up a lot of water, so a hot dog needs a big drink and a shady place to rest.
Help your dog stay cool
- Waterkeep the bowl full
- Shadea shady place to rest
- Hot dayswalk in the morning or the evening
- Never in a parked carcars get dangerously hot inside
A tiny experiment
Try it!
Pant like a dog
You need: the back of your hand and a little water
- Lick the back of your hand, or wet it with a little water.
- Now pant on it, like a dog. Huff, huff, huff!
- Does it feel cool?
What happened? The air carries the water away, and the water takes the heat with it. That is just how a dog's tongue feels.
Did you know?
A resting dog takes about twenty or thirty breaths in a minute. A panting dog can take more than two hundred!
Your guide in this video
It's me, Droppy, the little water drop. Today we will solve a waggy, wet-tongue mystery!
Droppy is a little blue water drop. A dog's tongue is always wet, and that is where Droppy comes in!
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