THE NOSE KNOWS

The Wonderful Wacky World of Scent

Understanding how our pets are guided by their olfactory senses

Photo by Michael Correll of author Deborah Camp getting sniffed by Chico and Romeo, two dog pals

Have you ever wondered why your pets are so enthralled with sniffing and smelling? You’re walking your dog and the next thing you know he’s wallowing around ecstatically in another dog’s poo.

Or you might be amused or even put off by your cat’s insistence on planting his nose up the butt of his cat friends.

Although smell is important to us humans, it’s not as critical as it is for our canine and feline pals. Cats and dogs — and other creatures — live in a world of scents.

According to Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition researcher at Barnard College, a dog’s scent organ is almost four times larger than a human’s, and their sense of smell is about fifty to a hundred times more powerful.

She writes:

“. . . while we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in a million gallons of water, or two Olympic-sized pools worth.”

A cat’s sense of smell is fourteen times stronger than ours with two hundred million odor-sensitive cells in their noses compared to only five million for humans says Dr. Ryan Llera, BSc, DVM.