We experience the world primarily through sight. Dogs experience it primarily through smell — and that difference is more profound than most of us have ever stopped to consider. The science of what a dog's nose actually does is one of the stranger and more humbling things in biology. Explore the science through the comments ↓↓↓ #DogNose #DogScience #DogSmell #AlexandraHorowitz #DogCognition #WalkYourDog #DogFacts
Dogs Can Smell Time. What That Actually Means — and What It Says About How Different Their World Is From Ours — Will Change How You Think About Every Walk You've Ever Taken Together.
When a dog approaches a fire hydrant that another dog visited six hours ago, it is not simply detecting that the other dog was there.
It is detecting how long ago the other dog was there. Scent molecules disperse at predictable rates — concentrations decrease measurably over time, and a dog's olfactory system is sensitive enough to register these gradients. In a very real sense, a dog sniffing the environment is reading not just space but time.
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