Dogs put their noses to work every second of the day, they enjoy sniffing out others dog’s scent and other stinky stuff. It can particularly embarrassing when they sniff the private parts of humans, felines or other canines. Anything goes where their noses are concerned. Even we may be a lovely shade of red.
However, there is far more to it than that, every dog needs to sniff to enable them to live a happy life. They use the their noses the same way that we recognise people’s faces. To them it’s like scrolling through social media or reading the news, knowing who has been where and when.
So here are a few things about a dog’s nose that makes them so interesting:
Dogs can use each nostril separately.
Your dog has a second nose. It’s called a vomeronasal organ or Jacobson’s organ. A patch of sensory cells within the main nasal chamber that detect moisture-borne odour particles.
While humans can scent up to 10,000 different smells, dogs can sense 100,000 different odours. This makes a dog’s nose much more sensitive than ours - isn’t that just amazing?
About 35% of a dog’s brain deals with odours, while only 5% of a human brain is devoted to smell.
Dogs inhale through their nostrils but exhale through the slits on the side of their noses.
A dog’s olfactory cortex (part of the brain) is 40 times larger a human’s. So maybe they really are more intelligent than us. I know ours think they can outwit us regularly.
Maybe next time your dog pulls your arm out of its socket, determined to smell that smell on a lamp post or even a human, we should marvel at the wonder of their nose and even be a little jealous.
All views and opinions are my own. If you are concerned about your own or someone else’s dog you should seek advice from professional services (useful contacts can be found here).
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