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Amazing Power
Of A Dog's Sense Of Smell
The canine
nose has something like twenty times as many primary receptor cells as
the human nose. How all of this works to detect odors is one of the
great scientific wonders of the world. Studies in a number of species
have found that different regions of the mucous lining within the nose
have different chemical properties, more readily absorbing chemicals of
one particular molecular shape or another, or preferentially absorbing
in one region chemicals that are more water soluble and in another
chemicals that are more fat soluble.
The ability of the nose to make precise chemical distinctions is truly
extraordinary. Some pairs of chemicals that exist in nature are
identical in every way - they are made up of exactly the same elements,
joined together in exactly the same three-dimensional sequence - except
that one is the three-dimensional mirror image of the other. Yet such
"stereoisomers" frequently have a dramatically different odor,
indicating that the nose can sort them out by their complex shape
alone. The molecule carvone, for example, has the odor of caraway in
one of its stereoisomers, the odor of oil of spearmint in its
mirror-image form.
Measurements of the acuity of the dog's nose suggest that the dog is
many times more sensitive than man to the presence of minute quantities
of odor molecules wafting in the air, but the data are all over the
map. This is probably in part because the threshold for detecting
different chemicals no doubt varies dramatically according to the
particular chemical involved. Some comparative studies have found that
dogs can detect certain organic chemicals at concentrations a hundred
times less than people are able to; for other compounds the dog's edge
may be a factor of a million or more. In police and security work, dogs
can detect the odor from natural gas leaks, concealed narcotics,
explosives, and currency, all at levels well below the threshold at
which humans are aware of the odor.
In controlled studies dogs could detect human scent on a glass slide
that had been lightly fingerprinted and then left outdoors for as much
as two weeks, or indoors for as much as a month; they could pick which
of six identical steel tubes had been held in the hands of a person for
no more than five seconds; they could distinguish between T-shirts worn
by two identical twins who ate different foods, or by two nonidentical
twins who lived in exactly the same environment and ate exactly the
same foods.
More than such a remarkable sensitivity to trace odors, it is the
ability to pick out particular odors of interest from a welter of
competing smells and to match and distinguish them that is the dog's
most impressive olfactory feat. This ability is surely a reflection of
the dog's superior olfactory computing powers, for it requires not just
smelling but analyzing. Dogs have no innate interest in the smell of
people, narcotics, or hundred-dollar bills; but if trained repeatedly
to focus on certain categories of smells, they can perform
mind-boggling feats of cross-matching.
There are more
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Amazing Power Of
A Dog's Sense Of Smell
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