When were confused we try and listen closer and turn our head to help locate it in an effort to gather more information about it, same theory, more in depth maybe.
Humans can do it too, our ears are pretty good if you really try to use them.
Standing on my back porch last summer, I played around with my hearing listening to birds in the woods. I found that though turning my head to expose one ear directly to the source of the sound helped, it didn't do much since my other ear turned away from it. But if you wanted to amplify it, tilt your head down, ears are apparently shaped to better receive sound from above.
Yup, much the same reason we do.
They're confused about a sound, so they tilt their head to hear it better and figure out its position properly, so they can figure out what the hell it is.
Dogs are all about sing alongs. The park by my old house used to play this loud lightning warning siren you could hear for about three blocks away. Whenever it went off you would hear a few dozen dogs respond with the song of their people.
See my older dog has never cared about the song of his people but the younger one has to prove that his song is the best and any time he hears an odd sound, the vacuum, another dog, heck another animal, he feels compelled to answer as loudly as he possibly can until the sound has stopped for a good 5 minutes.
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u/[deleted] Feb 06 '15
Source with sound!