A dog’s nose is his eyes to the world. Its nose is optimized not just for smelling, but it contains a passage to receptor cells. Dogs can remember certain smells and identify people and their surroundings using those smells. If you have a pet dog, it can recognize that you are around even if you have not entered the driveway as yet.
Dog’s know your smell, and before you come in their sight, they can identify your presence. But, their smell powers are not limited to identifying another person or another animal around. They can smell diseases and seizures way before they happen. So if you heard a dog’s nose is up to 100 million times more sensitive as compared to human noses, you heard it right. The aforementioned explains the reason why dogs can smell seizures before they start and may smell cancer.
The theory behind a dog’s super nose
That cold, moist, and leathery tip by the end of your dog’s nose is identified as the rhinarium. In comparison to other animals’ nose, your dog’s nose is several degrees colder than the temperatures of its surroundings, to which scientists have attributed to body temperature regulation.
Therefore, the investigators engaged in this new study hypothesized dogs’ cold noses might help them detect radiating feeble heat an ability that only a small number of creatures, like fire beetles and bats, are known to possess. That would help explain why dogs with impaired sight or hearing can still successfully hunt.
The researchers coached three pet dogs to select from the objects, one which has been room temperature and the other that has been warmer than room temperature. The objectives were set about five feet off and covered so that the dogs couldn’t smell or see them. In a group of double-blind experiments, three dogs could detect the items that emit weak thermal radiation. So we see sight is not a part of discovering the surrounding dangers, the nose is a major part.
Next, they scanned the brains of 13 dogs while showing them items that had either neutral radiation or feeble thermal radiation. They found that the left somatosensory cortex that gives information from the nose to the brain. It lit up in reaction to the warm stimuli. Still, rays were so weak that if they were hot and the scientists got their hands to the surfaces of the items. This helped determine and suggest that a dog’s nose is a lot more sensitive to heating as compared to hands.
More research needs to be conducted to assess how this evolutionary characteristic developed. However, it’s yet another example that shows there’s no shortage of amazing skills dogs have.
Conclusion
The theory above and experiment have checked for both sensory organs of the dog, namely nose and hands. The researchers conclude that a dog’s nose is a lot more sensitive than any other sensory organ. A dog’s nose can identify thermal radiation, be it equaling to negligible thermal radiation, even if it is not able to see or feel the object containing thermal emissions.