Showing posts with label what a dog's nose tells them about you. Show all posts
Showing posts with label what a dog's nose tells them about you. Show all posts
Sunday, August 26, 2018

A Dog's Sense of Smell Tells Them A Lot About You



A dog’s sense of smell is said to be a thousand times more sensitive than that of a human's, but in fact they have more than 220 million olfactory receptors compared to just 5 million in our human nose. This keen sense of smell can allow them to detect illegal drugs, cancerous cells, explosives, and missing people very effectively, sometimes even as far as 40 feet underground.

Dogs use their sense of smell to gain information, interpret its surroundings and to communicate.   Dogs are born sniffers and can read a situation even though they can't talk.  It is believed that dogs can smell fear and anxiety (e.g. a person may start to perspire and dogs will know), can detect that you aren't feeling well (when a person is sick their metabolism changes which can affect the chemicals in your breath) and can even detect when you are stressed because they can smell the rise of cortisol (increases under stress).  Because of a dog's sense of smell,  a dog may know  and understand  you better than you know yourself!