Why do dogs stick their heads out car windows?

Have you ever wondered why dogs love poking their heads out of car windows? The answer, according to Adelaide zoologist Chris Daniels, is much more interesting than "because they can".

"We need to remember that a dog's head is this incredible sensory apparatus," said Professor Daniels, from the University of South Australia.

"They smell so much better than we do, in that their sense of smell is much greater than we have, and they have good vision.

"Their head is jam-packed full of sensors, so when they stick their head out the window, they've got this great pressure of air moving at great speed over them, and it's a sensory overload."

Professor Daniels said every time a dog stuck its head out of a moving car window, it was evidence of its adventurous and opportunistic nature.

"There's one thing that's really become apparent over the last 20 years about a great many species, and not just mammals, and that is they like to have fun," he said.

"They like joy … they like great feelings and experiences that make them feel good."

Not all dogs like sticking their head out the window

Dogs, of course, have their individual tastes.

Professor Daniels said some liked to open their mouths so the wind could flap their jowls around. Others go with a more discreet, closed mouth.

And a few dogs prefer not to poke their head out the window at all.

Professor Daniels said he believed that was one of the best insights of all into a dog's world.

"They are not solely driven by needs. So it is not all about food, or water, or sex, or innate behaviours," he said.

"This is something that a dog chooses to do, or not to do, and it does it for no other reason than it feels good, so in that sense, they are like us … they can do things for the love of it."

But that can lead, so to speak, to other less desirable human-like behaviours — dogs can get hooked on the feeling.

"They can have an addiction sort of issue as well," Professor Daniels said.

"They get used to it, they love it, they want to keep doing it, sometimes to the point where some dogs get anxious if you don't wind down the window.

"They'll get into the car and demand the window comes down, so they can get this fix of great sensory overload."

Like sniffing glue!

Or taking the purple acid . . . don't!

My tickets . . .

You freakin' hippie!!

Please tell me you took the purple acid!

No purple or brown acid - they warned us off.

However, my high school girl friend, who was by that time, a senior at the University of California, Santa Barbara, had obtained for me a small jar of genuine Owsley Sunshine LSD - the primo acid of the time! So, yes, I was blazing from the time Santana took the stage on Saturday afternoon until Jefferson Airplane closed day two as the sun came up on Sunday morning.

Having returned from a year in Southeast Asia just three months previously, it was just what the doctor ordered *chuckle*, but I was hardly your standard model hippie. Stationed at the Military Academy at West Point, NY, I'm pretty sure most of my fellow concert goers though I must have been a narc . . . until they didn't.

Anyway, camping out in the rain and muck was no hardship for me. At least I could rest assured that Janis Joplin wouldn't be taking pot shots at me, although when the choppers arrived to evacuate the drug casualties, I did suffer a momentary flashback . . .

Far out!

Wow what a concert that must have been! Green with envy!

I'm amazed you can remember it!

They say if you can remember the 60's, you weren't there.

Of course, it became much more than a concert. A singular event, never to be repeated I'm afraid, at least not in my lifetime.

It was totally unexpected which is why every attempt to recreate it has failed. I was out of the Army and home in California when Altamont was announced, but I figured, 'been there, done that.'

Good choice - it was a disaster . . .

Sadly, that is true for so many, but having dabbled with psychedelics when LSD was still legal, I had determined my own ability to enjoy the experience without mishap or 'memory loss.'

I should admit, however, there was one exception to that general rule. In the early 1970's, Steely Dan gave what for them was a rare concert at UC Irvine. I was living at the beach at the time, and I really liked this new band, so I decided to go. As I had done dozens of times previously with everyone from The Rolling Stones to Frank Zappa, I wanted to drop a tab to 'enhance' the music.

All I remember is starting to come on as we entered the UCI venue, and I mean, that is all. I have no memory whatsoever of the concert or the rest of that night, but that was the only time that happened *chuckle* . . . I think.

It still pisses me off!

Just to be clear . . . from 2012 . . .

When LSD Was Legal (And Cary Grant Was Tripping)

In the latest episode of Mad Men Roger Sterling, the silver-haired drunkard rascal of SCDP, attends a high society LSD party. For some 21st century viewers this seemed strange - wasn't LSD a hippie drug? Wasn't it all about long hairs and weird tribal imagery? Eventually that would be the case, but the early of history of acid - before it became illegal - was filled with trippers who were at the very top of the social order - the richest and most famous people in America.

LSD was first synthesized in 1938 by Dr. Albert Hoffman in Switzerland, but it wasn't until five years later that anybody knew what it did to you. That's because it wasn't until 1943 that Hoffman accidentally took some of the drug and embarked on history's first acid trip. While man had been tripping on hallucinogens since the dawn of time - we have receptors in our brains designed to accept psychotropic chemicals - acid is quite different. And besides, it's unlikely that Dr. Hoffman was doing a lot of peyote, so he wasn't very prepared. His first experience was actually fairly nice, but three days later - April 19! A day before dumb 420! - he dosed himself on purpose. That didn't go so well; bicycling home he really fell apart, thinking his neighbor was a witch and that LSD had poisoned him. Eventually he got his shit together and had a nice finale to the trip.

Everybody knows that the CIA seized on acid as a possible mind control drug, using it in their MKULTRA experiments. They would pay prostitutes to dose unsuspecting businessmen and then watch what happened; there were deaths, including that of Frank Olson, who either freaked out and jumped from a 13th floor window or was pushed by the CIA (the reason he was pushed, perhaps: he knew that in 1951 the CIA had dosed an entire French town, Pont-Saint-Esprit, leading to 50 psychotic episodes, a number of people being institutionalized and four deaths). 

But acid wasn't just being used for sinister purposes. At the same time that the CIA was conducting MKULTRA experiments, a Los Angeles psychiatrist named Oscar Janiger began experimenting with the drug for therapy, with a special focus on how it impacted creativity. While Timothy Leary will forever be remembered as the foremost medical advocate for LSD, Janiger was the true pioneer. His patients included Aldous Huxley (who had already written The Doors of Perception about his experiments with mescaline), Anais Nin, Andre Previn, James Coburn, Billy Wilder's writing partner Charles Brackett and Cary Grant. Grant dropped acid probably well over a hundred times, a pretty remarkable number of trips for a guy who seems like the emodiment of the squarely suave 40s.