Human Nose = Dogs?

[sparkx 0]

Im not sure if they got there facts right, but I just saw on the news that a study has showed that human's can smell as well as dogs can. It says that the age old saying "Dogs have great noses" may be incorrect and humans can smell well we just need to be close to the ground. Is this correct? I'm pretty sure they messed up but could it be possible? I think I hured it on good morning America or the news that comes on before that. Maby it was Fox News?Thanks for the help,~Sparkx~

[Grafitti 0]

That's definitely wrong. Dogs are much more sensitive smellers. An extremely large proportion of the dog's brain is devoted to processing olfactory signals.

I found the article you mentioned, but in reading it you see that the scent they had the people follow was chocolate perfume. Naturally people can smell that. But pit that against a bloodhound that can smell an article of clothing from a person, and follow their trail through anywhere except water, even days afterwards. Can a person do that? Of course not. Anyways, here's the article:

CHICAGO -- Since the most ancient humans lifted their noses from the ground and stood upright, humanity's sense of smell has dwindled to second-class status, a talent we gladly leave to drug-sniffing dogs.

 

But a new study suggests that buried in each person's olfactory lobe lurks enough tracking skill to make a bloodhound bay with resentment.

 

If the results are surprising, that may be because no one ever tried putting a bunch of college undergraduates in a field wearing blindfolds and sound-muffling headphones, then had them crawl in the grass after a scent like pigs hunting for truffles.

 

When researchers at the University of California-Berkeley did try that, they found that most of the students could follow a 30-foot trail of chocolate perfume and even changed direction precisely where the invisible path took a turn. What's more, the subjects were able to smell in stereo; when researchers blocked their ability to smell independently with each nostril, the students' scent-tracking accuracy dropped off dramatically.

 

By revealing how noses locate smells, the scientists hope to lay the groundwork for electronic noses that could detect hazards like land mines. Their work, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office.

 

Other experts say the findings will help rebut the misconception that people stink at following scents.

 

"What this study highlights most for me is that the human sense of smell is a lot better than many people think it is," said Jay Gottfried, a professor of neurology at Northwestern University.

 

"It's true that our lives are taken up by visual and auditory streams of consciousness," Gottfried said. "But if you paid more attention to smell, it would become a more prominent aspect of your life."

 

Our dormant flair for smell comes as no surprise to many researchers who study perception. Humans need a good sense of smell to distinguish flavors, which arise only partly from the taste buds on the tongue. Without smell, people would have little ability to tell apart the flavors of different fruits or types of meat.

 

Granted, we'll never match the prowess of nature's specialty smellers, such as rats or German shepherds. Other animals have bigger snouts to gather scents and more brain area devoted to processing smells, not to mention the built-in advantage of four-legged creatures that constantly put their noses to the ground. While it took the Berkeley students up to 10 minutes to navigate the scent path, a dog could do the same feat in seconds.

 

In order to focus on the students' olfactory ability, the researchers put together an outfit that one likened to a mobile sensory deprivation chamber. The subjects wore taped-over goggles, earmuffs and thick work gloves to block anything but smell from guiding their way. They also wore devices over their noses to control how much scent each nostril could take in and to measure how fast they were sniffing.

 

Decked out in full regalia, the students resembled members of an exotic humanoid species.

 

"We drew lots of crowds," said study lead author Jess Porter, a graduate student in biophysics at Berkeley's neuroscience institute.

 

A major reason the scientists studied human subjects is that people are more willing than animals such as dogs to put up with all the extra equipment the study required.

 

"Dogs really don't like having things in their nostrils," said co-author Noam Sobel, an associate professor at Berkeley.

 

To create a scent trail, the scientists soaked a line of string in the chocolate scent and embedded it in the grass. The people were set loose on the ground about nine feet away from the trail, then had to find the scent and follow it.

 

Faced with a tracking task that virtually no person ever has to do, the humans quickly adopted some of the same habits that dogs use. They zigzagged as they tracked the smell, much like hunting dogs following a pheasant -- in fact, dogs typically veer off a trail even more than the human subjects did. Scientists have seen similar behavior among crabs following scent plumes underwater.

 

Although no one knows for sure why zigzagging is important, one theory is that tracking animals, including people, try to keep a sense of where the boundary of the smell is so they don't lose the trail.

 

"You want to maximize your chances of noticing when the track is going to turn," Porter said.

 

A key observation was that the people did better at tracking when they could sense distinct smells in each nostril. When the subjects wore a device that channeled the same air into both nostrils, their performance lagged.

 

The researchers said the contribution of the two nostrils is similar to the way having two ears lets us find a sound's origin.

 

"When someone drops a coin on the ground, you immediately know where to turn," Gottfried said. "That's because your brain computes the difference in when the sound arrives at each ear and extracts information about where the coin fell."

 

Just so, Gottfried said, the brain may use the offset odor "images" from each nostril to build a spatial picture of the scent trail.

 

All that latent talent for following smells may go to waste in the modern world of climate-controlled office buildings, though many Chicagoans get a daily scent workout from the wafting aromas of the Blommer Chocolate Co. factory. Experts said it's unclear how well people could track such an airborne plume, as opposed to a stationary scent on the ground.

 

The humans in the Berkeley experiment improved with experience, even increasing their rate of sniffing as they moved faster along the course. Still, they never approached what a fast-sniffing canine can do.

 

"I don't think this means people will ever take the dog's place on a fox hunt," said Gottfried of Northwestern.

 

And for particulars on why dogs smell better than we do:

Dogs have a better sense of smell than we do because the physical structure of a dog is better adapted for scenting odours. In dogs this sense has remained keen, while in man it has become comparatively dull. Dogs use scent in feeding, detecting enemies, recognizing mates and offspring and in rivalry.

Of all a dog's senses, its sense of smell is the most highly developed. Dogs have about 25 times more olfactory (smell) receptors than humans do. These receptors occur in special sniffing cells deep in a dog's snout and are what allow a dog to "out-smell" humans.

Dogs can sense odors at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than humans can. They can detect one drop of blood in five quarts of water! Sniffing the bare sidewalk may seem crazy, but it yields a wealth of information to your dog, whether it's the scent of the poodle next door or a whiff of the bacon sandwich someone dropped last week.

[Chesso 0]

Are you sure we can't do that, have we ever tried?Seriously, not once in mine or any other persons lifetime have I ever heard of anyone trying to, and if we don't try, how will we know or get better at such a thing eh.

[sparkx 0]

... (error post to long to read to tired of reading lol) OK... It seems you have some 10 Host Credit post up there expaining why this is wrong. After reading the first paragraph I diceted that the study was wrong and Fox News has put incorrect stuff on Television yet again lol. I wounder if they have gotten letters to the editor yet about it (if you can have letters to a tv channel lol). Thank you very much Graffiti and Chesso for telling me this.~Sparkx~

[Markymark2 0]

Fox News in BS news SHOCK!!Wow im shocked!!Im still trying to work out whos winning the war on terror!! I think its 1-0 to the Terror side but i cant be certain

[flashdiamond 0]

No that is got to be Wong. I have a dog and he knows when some one is going to ring the bell before any one rings the bell. And of cores I have heard cases of witch dogs use the nose to find drugs and bombs. And they sussed, people say things like that all the time on TV to get the people's attention.

[Chesso 0]

Well of course they sniff out bombs and drugs, because there trained too, are we? no were not lol.I'm sure there are other ways of going about it, but I guess they think they look cool with dogs or something .

[Grafitti 0]

... (error post to long to read to tired of reading lol) OK... It seems you have some 10 Host Credit post up there expaining why this is wrong.

No, because i put it in quotes. Things in quotes don't count towards your points. If i would have put it as normal text a mod would have put it in quotes and given me a warning.

[Chesso 0]

That's correct, iv'e seen that happen quite a fews times around here. Good on you for doing the right thing and of course adding your own opinions on the text *thumbs up!!!*.

[Quatrux 4]

Well, it is definitely wrong that people can smell like dogs, we, humans, never really needed such a nose with which we could smell drugs or bombs in the distance of 500 metres.. Just imagine if you could smell/have a nose like a Dog, your life would be miserable, you would smell everything and because you aren't so stupid as a dog, you would understand much more from where that smell is coming from, dogs are used to stinking smells, their life is based on smell, they can tell from far if it is a girl dog or a boy dog, can we? Don't get me wrong, but how many times you mistaken some women or man with opposite sides? You can't smell it, you just can see with your eyes and long hair doesn't mean it is a women/female. Dogs life is based on smell, so this is pure evolution, we don't need such a nose.Moreover, dogs can hear much better, we don't need to hear so well to, also try to imagine your ears would be very sensitive, you would be hearing what your neighbours doing upstairs and stuff, you could get mad by going through downtown.. Etc.Well, I am not saying it isn't possible to make humans smell or hear much better by using new technology and stuff, but I wouldn't want that, the natural order would fail and stuff, that is why from ancient times we have dogs, horses trained for us, sometimes wolfs or eagles for eyes

[Chesso 0]

Then why do male dogs some how have to come up and sniff my nuts and still mistake me for the female gender :|, or are there gay dogs or something :S (i'm being serious, it's happened on quite a few ocassions, I think there own noses are decieving them).

[Quatrux 4]

Then why do male dogs some how have to come up and sniff my nuts and still mistake me for the female gender :|, or are there gay dogs or something :S (i'm being serious, it's happened on quite a few ocassions, I think there own noses are decieving them).

Well, as a matter of fact, gay dogs exist, same as racist dogs and stuff Some dogs are just to stupid and don't care about the gender, but for example I have a dog too, he used to sniff female and male dogs and you know tried to make a family hahaha, but once he tried the real thing with the female dog, he isn't a gay dog anymore and every time a male dog when playing around in the plains tries to get on him, he gets really angry, because he knows, has the knowledge of what is the right way.

So to answer your question, a dog needs to understand the smell and stuff, because there really are stupid dogs and smart ones, that is a fact among people too, but dogs have very strong instincts about which they can't really do anything, they are usually stronger, so without knowledge instincts goes first. Humans have instincts too, for example somewhere I read that if you grow a female together with a male separate out of world from their childhood and they won't ever see any humans, they will still want to have a family, but they won't know how much is 2+2, pure barbarians or something like that, etc.

[rainbowsoup 0]

Human noses are definitely not as good as dogs noses. The blood hound has 250 million receptors for smell in its nose whilst the human only has about 20 million so its not possible for the human sense of smell to match a dog's

[mirdux 0]

Well, as a matter of fact, gay dogs exist, same as racist dogs and stuff Some dogs are just to stupid and don't care about the gender, but for example I have a dog too, he used to sniff female and male dogs and you know tried to make a family hahaha, but once he tried the real thing with the female dog, he isn't a gay dog anymore and every time a male dog when playing around in the plains tries to get on him, he gets really angry, because he knows, has the knowledge of what is the right way.

So to answer your question, a dog needs to understand the smell and stuff, because there really are stupid dogs and smart ones, that is a fact among people too, but dogs have very strong instincts about which they can't really do anything, they are usually stronger, so without knowledge instincts goes first. Humans have instincts too, for example somewhere I read that if you grow a female together with a male separate out of world from their childhood and they won't ever see any humans, they will still want to have a family, but they won't know how much is 2+2, pure barbarians or something like that, etc.

 

In my opinion most dogs dont do that because theyre gay.. most of the time there just trying to get your attention... and if you really look at it, mostly for males they have a keen sense of what part of the human body is most sensitive ie. licking your face, "grundling" lol... Its a pretty cool thing if you think about it, how they can analyze things that way.

 

Someone was saying earlier that maybe biotech could be developed to have humans smell better. Im sure this is possible, but on top of being very costly to even research, because it would involve modifying the millions of chemoreceptors in the nose, it would be a while. And on top of that, sometimes humans dont want to smell certain things that dogs can.. imagine walking into a public bathroom that with a normal sensitivity would be bad, with a biotech smell it would be unbearable. Again, im sure its possible its just very far off. Lol kind of like a "smelling aid"

Edited January 18, 2007 by mirdux (see edit history)

[iGuest 3]

Sparkx, you are so wrong becouse dogs are good smellers.-reply by jasmine