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| The dogs sense of smell is ranging from one hundred thousand to one million times more sensitive than ours, this together with the ease with which they cooperate with us humans make them the perfect tool, or as I prefer to view it, coworker, for the scientists doing everything from medical research to wildlife population estimations and everything in between. |
When most people hear about dogs used in science or for scientific purposes, they think of beagles in a lab that has tubes inserted in different places and get injected with different chemicals. The role of the dog in science has evolved however, and we find more and more uses for our four-legged companions, mostly in ways that doesn't harm them one bit, but rather harness the awesome capacities hidden inside the nose and central nervous system of the dog; its sens of smell.
Unlike the human brain where a large part is concerned with dealing with interpretation of visual input, the dogs brain is dominated by its olfactory cortex, that is the area of the brain concerned with the sense of smell. In a way you could say that they see the world through smells, or at least experience it through smells. The olfactory bulb (where the receptors for smell are located) of the dog is forty times bigger than that of a human.
Due to this and their will to cooperate with humans on an unprecedented level in the animal kingdom, dogs are now used in many fields of research, from detecting cancer to locating owls and even finding killer whales! (Click on the links below to read more about it.) There seems to be no limits to what dogs can detect with their noses, the limiting factor is the human imagination.
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| "Is that a whale I smell?" A picture from one of the walks with the Siberian huskies this summer, Vida tried to smell things under water.. |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14557224
http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120902/NEWS0107/209020364/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815174906.htm
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