Dog age calculator
Enter your dog’s age to see it in human years, using the DNA-based formula from a 2020 study. Pick its breed from all 363 in the game, then guess where that breed comes from.
How old is your dog?
In human years, about
53At 4 years, your dog is a mature adult. Calculated with the DNA-based formula from Wang and colleagues (2020).
How do dog years work?
Dog years do not add up at a steady rate. In 2020 Wang and colleagues compared the chemical marks that build up on DNA with age in 104 dogs, mostly Labrador Retrievers, and in people. They fitted one formula: human age = 16 × ln(dog age) + 31, where ln is the natural logarithm and the dog’s age is in years.
It runs fast early and slow later. In the study, a puppy of about 8 weeks matched a baby of about 9 months, and a 12-year-old Labrador, the breed’s expected lifespan, matched a person of about 70.
Does breed change the answer?
The formula was built mostly on one breed, and the study notes that average lifespan differs a great deal between breeds. We found no authority that publishes a breed-by-breed or size-by-size conversion, so this calculator does not invent one. It shows your breed’s size class from its official standard, as a note.
Source: Wang T. et al., “Quantitative Translation of Dog-to-Human Aging by Conserved Remodeling of the DNA Methylome”, Cell Systems, 2020 (paper, full text).
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