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Have you ever wondered how old your dog is in human years? Previously, it was always assumed that a dogs human age is their real age multiplied by 7. For example, if you’d dog is 10 years old, then they are 70 in human years.
Now, there’s no real science behind that method, and it’s believed that it was originally an advert for a dog food brand that first came up with this method.
Recently, The University of California have been investigating this by studying
104 Labrador Retrievers with ages from a few weeks old all the way up to 16 years old.
With all their fancy tech and mathematical skills, they’ve come up with a new formula to calculate a dogs (at least for Labradors) human age more accurately.
They did this by comparing chemical marks on the DNA, called methylation marks, between dogs and humans.
Methylation marks are responsible for things like teething and giving birth amongst other age related changes in our bodies.
After all their testing, they came up with a new formula, and the results may surprise you!
Here is how to calculate their age:
Load up your calculator on your phone and your phone to landscape.
Type in your dogs age.
Press the In ( which stands for natural logarithm) button.
Multiply this figure by 16
Then add 31.
And there you have it, your dogs age! Not complicated at all!
In case you don’t have a calculator to hand with an In button, here is the outcome of different ages.
Interestingly, if you’ve watched a puppy and a child grow up, you’ll see some similarities in behaviours between the ages.
Here are the results:
8 weeks = 1 year 2 months
6 months = 5 years
1 year = 31 years old
2 years = 42 years old
3 years = 48 years old
4 years = 53
5 = 56
6 = 60
7 = 62
8 = 64
9 = 66
10 = 68
11 = 69
12 = 71
It’s surprising that a 1 year old Labrador is already 31 human years, genetically speaking!
More studies are needed on this, since this was solely done on Labradors. My personal opinion is that the smaller the breed, the faster their human years go up to begin with then the slower they go up after they pass the 30 human years mark. For bigger dogs, the longer it takes to get to the 30 human year mark and the quicker their human year age increases after that point.
For now though, there it is, your dogs age in human years, for labradors at least anyway.