[Dailydrool] Smelling

[Sabrina Nicholls]

I was amused by people trying to hide the scent of evil smelling pills 
in food like liverwurst. Dogs can still smell the pill, but they decide 
it's worth swallowing to get the liverwurst. I've been reading Being a 
Dog by Alexandra Horowitz. It has a lot of information about dogs' sense 
of smell. Examples she gives are that if you put the smell of banana 
inside a canister, dogs keep finding the banana until it is diluted to 
1-2 parts per TRILLION. A dog can smell 1 mg of smelly socks among 100 
million cubic meters of air.  And an explosives detection dog can smell 
as little as a trillionth of a gram of TNT. I also found it interesting 
that dogs smell in through their nostrils and out through the sides of 
their noses so exhaling doesn't push out any scent. And they can smell 
from one nostril at a time, starting with the right nostril. Long smells 
can last up to 40 seconds while short smells can be as quick at 12 per 
second. If your dog seems to miss a treat you dropped and continues to 
sniff, it's not that he misses the treat, he's just checking out what 
else is nearby before going back to that spot. I was also fascinated by 
Horowitz' earlier book, Inside of a Dog.

I joined the Daily Drool in the mid-90s. There were 66 members when I 
joined, and it was on AOL. I don't see any danger of its dying. During 
this thread, it has been nice to hear from some of the old timers.

Sabrina Nicholls, Gumbo and Ellie (Brendan and Calhoune ATB)
brii at sprynet.com