[blackjackblax]

Did anyone else click on this post thinking it was going to be about how dogs smell? Like what they smell like, not how they smell thru their noses? My GSD/Dane mix smells like Cheetos. I know...I'm retarded. Pretty cool article though.

[LoohornePharp]

I wondered if it would be about why dogs smell the way they do. I know each of my dogs has a different scent. I could tell them apart blindfolded by their smell. Owen, being the Basset, smells like corn chips. The others I can't describe, but their scents are pleasant and homey to me.

[SmuffNuSMaxqh]

Did anyone else click on this post thinking it was going to be about how dogs smell? Like what they smell like, not how they smell thru their noses? My GSD/Dane mix smells like Cheetos. I know...I'm retarded. Pretty cool article though.

Sorry for any confusion but I found the article interesting & hedged my bets on the title so members thinking either way would get a look & hopefully feel the same way.

My dog smells like Popcorn, no idea why.

[SmuffNuSMaxqh]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ose-knows.html


Ever wondered how a dog, with a sense of smell that may be thousands of times more sensitive than ours, can bear to bury its face in the trash can? Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition researcher at Columbia University in New York City and author of Inside of a Dog: What dogs see, smell, and know, says it's because the dog isn't simply smelling a stronger version of the revolting mono-stench that we smell. "It is not that smells are 'louder'," she says. "The smells have different layers, which probably give dogs a much bigger range of types of information." She compares it to the way we might enjoy a painting from across the room, but appreciate it in a different way when we can get up close and see the brush strokes.
This makes a dog's experience fundamentally different to our own. When we go out for a walk, for example, we get almost all of our information from vision. But the dog's eyes are just a back-up. This was shown when police tracker dogs were given a scent trail that seemed to run in the opposite direction to a set of footprints on the ground; they invariably followed their noses and ignored the contradictory visual cues (Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol 84, p 297). This reliance on smell explains why a dog that isn't expecting to see its owner will often stop a metre or so away for a quick sniff before jumping all over them.
To imagine the scent-based world of a dog, says Horowitz, look around and imagine that everything you see has its own individual scent. And not just each object - different parts of the same object may hold different types of information. Horowitz gives the example of a rose: each petal might have a different scent, telling the dog it has been visited by different insects that left telltale traces of pollen from other flowers. Besides picking up on the individual scent of humans that had touched the flower, it could even guess when they may have passed by.
Passing Time

In this way, smell might give a dog a way of understanding the passage of time, Horowitz suggests. A dog can perhaps perceive the past by smelling that a dog urinated here long enough ago that the scent has changed in character and become weaker. One recent study, from 2005, showed that dogs may even be able to detect the subtle differences in odour from one footstep to the next as they follow a human's scent trail (Chemical Senses, vol 30, p 291). The dog could imagine the future by picking up the scent of the dogs, humans or other objects coming towards them on the breeze.
Unfortunately there's no way for a mere human to get inside this highly detailed world. Even if we get down on the ground and sniff, we cannot do it like a dog. When we sniff we are sporadically blind to scent as we breathe in and out through the same holes. A 2009 study of the fluid dynamics of the dog's sniff showed that their system is far more complex. Each nostril is smaller than the distance between the two, which means that they inhale air from two distinct regions of space, allowing the dog to decipher the direction of a scent. The sniff also funnels stale air out through the sides of the nostrils, an action which pulls new air into the nose. Once inside the nose the air swirls around up to 300 million olfactory receptors, compared with our measly 6 million (Journal of the Royal Society Interface, vol 7, p 933).
Even if humans could gather this information, our brains wouldn't know what to do with it: the dog olfactory cortex, which processes scent information, takes up 12.5 per cent of their total brain mass, while ours accounts for less than 1 per cent.
While we can never truly experience the world of the dog, we can at least imagine the kinds of fascinating information that a dog might get from sniffing that lamp post. And maybe, just occasionally, we will resist the temptation to tug the lead to get somewhere more "interesting".
Caroline Williams is a writer based in Surrey, UK

[ronaldasten]

Cool.

But you know one thing I have always wondered...why is it that even though dogs have such a superior sense of both smell and hearing...

you can still sneak up on them and scare the crap out of them?

[choollaBard]

Maybe because they space out and dont pay attention?

Why do people walk into mirrors when they can see themselves?

[LoohornePharp]

My dogs, being gross, will sometimes steal my husbands boxers and pants, make a bed out of them and sleep with their noses right in the crotch area. I know they are smelling a days worth of farts, ball sweat and who knows what else. Never understood it other than "Hmm, dogs are gross and love stink." Now I know why! Apparently, dogs love many layers of stink and now know more about my husband and how he spent his day than I do!

---------- Post added at 11:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:08 AM ----------

Cool.

But you know one thing I have always wondered...why is it that even though dogs have such a superior sense of both smell and hearing...

you can still sneak up on them and scare the crap out of them?

I noticed that I can't sneak up on my dogs unless they are really into what they are doing. If they are out in the yard sniffing something you could let a bomb off by them and they wouldn't notice providing the bomb didn't release a more interesting scent.

I have also noticed I can't sneak up on them if they are into smelling or chewing something they know they aren't supposed to be into. It's like they know they are doing bad, cannot help themselves, and are listening for my approach so they can run off and pretend they had nothing to do with the bad.

[Olphander]

My dogs, being gross, will sometimes steal my husbands boxers and pants, make a bed out of them and sleep with their noses right in the crotch area. I know they are smelling a days worth of farts, ball sweat and who knows what else. Never understood it other than "Hmm, dogs are gross and love stink." Now I know why! Apparently, dogs love many layers of stink and now know more about my husband and how he spent his day than I do!

Ewwww!

[SmuffNuSMaxqh]

My dogs, being gross, will sometimes steal my husbands boxers and pants, make a bed out of them and sleep with their noses right in the crotch area. I know they are smelling a days worth of farts, ball sweat and who knows what else. Never understood it other than "Hmm, dogs are gross and love stink." Now I know why! Apparently, dogs love many layers of stink and now know more about my husband and how he spent his day than I do!
.

My mutt is the same, she loves my dirty socks, gruds & t-shirts. She sighs & snuffles really happily when she nestles into the clothes. I take it as a sign of true friendship. LOL