Scientists guess the dog’s sense of smell is somewhere around 100,000 times more acute than ours, the reason being the huge number of scent receptors. We trained four dogs, all of which were pets whose owners volunteered them for the task, to “choose” one of three scent canisters. Smell is the primary sense that dogs use to take in their surroundings. Each can hold a sample of the subject’s sweat or breath from either before or after the experiment, depending on whether or not the subject’s blood pressure and heart rate had also increased. Treo, Fingal, Soot, and Winnie were all given their favorite canine snack if they were able to maintain their position of either standing or sitting in front of the “stressed” sample without moving.

Source: Washington Post October 01, 2022 22:30 UTC