Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Dogs on the Trail

If only their sense of smell would keep them out of the garbage!



How come dogs have better sense of smell than us?
BY KATHY WOLLARD
Special to Newsday
How do dogs smell things we can't? asks Olivia Minogue, a student in Sayville.

Sniff sniff sniff.

You can actually see a dog's nose hard at work, picking up a scent wafting through the air, following the invisible trail a rabbit left in the yard, or investigating your pants leg for evidence of a secret meeting with a cat.

No one knows for sure how much more scent-sensitive dogs are than humans: a thousand times? Ten thousand?

But what is known is that a dog's nose has many more odor receptors, and an olfactory (smell) center that takes up much more room in the brain.

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