Everybody knows that dogs have a powerful sense of smell. Researchers have estimated that dogs sense of smell is a hundred thousand times better than humans.
The wet exterior of the nose captures the odors from the air.
As one researcher put it, one nanogram of something is enough for a dog to smell it.
Just so you know a nanogram is .000,000,001 of a gram.
Dogs can actually smell up to 40 feet below ground!
You may also be aware that dogs have 50 times more olfactory receptors and the percentage of the dog’s brain that is devoted to smell is many times that used by humans.
But did you know that dogs can sense smell in 3D?
Dogs have stereoscopic noses. Just like we can see stereoscopically dogs can also smell in 3D. Each of their nostrils can operate independently.
By using the same mechanism we use to see dogs can triangulate the direction of a smell with pinpoint accuracy. They map out their environment. Which is certainly one reason they make such excellent trackers.
Another ability most people are unaware of is that dogs can sense heat with their nose. A researcher is Budapest has discovered that dogs have an infrared sensor in their nose that can detect very minute changes in temperature.
They can smell the movement of air and may even be able use that to detect the time of day.
Dogs also have a vomeronasal organ which humans don’t have. That organ allows them to recognize and identify pheromones. That’s how the whole neighborhood knows when Fifi’s in heat.
The amount of information they gather with their nose is way beyond what most people can even imagine.
For dogs losing their sense of smell would be like going blind for us. Dogs ‘see’ their environment with their noses.
Another dog study investigated the mental abstractions they create from their sense of smell and found them to be way more nuanced that previously believed.
It appears that a dog’s conscious environment is created by their noses. Smelling is how they interpret the world.
Some dogs have been describe as a nose with four legs.
When dogs are sniffing the behind of their fellow neighborhood dogs they are just gathering information about the identity of the sniffee.
The next time you’re embarrassed by your pet’s ‘indiscriminate’ sniffing of a guest, just realize that his or her nose is a huge part of their experience of the world.
