The 5 senses that a dog has are: Smell, Hearing, Taste, Touch and Site.
Which of these is the strongest? If you guessed ‘Smell’, you’re barking up the right tree!
It has been found that a dog’s sense of smell can be 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger than ours. There are several factors why dogs have such a great sense of smell.
- Olfactory Receptors (Smell Receptors): While humans have around 6 million olfactory receptors, dogs can have 300 million of them. That’s 50 times more than us! No wonder they are quite the sniffers!
- Jacobson’s Organ: Dogs even have a secondary olfactory organ called ‘Jacobson’s organ’. It is located inside the nasal cavity and its purpose is specifically for chemical communication. Chemical communication is often used to mark territories.
- Olfactory Lobe: The olfactory lobe’s function is to understand what smell is. Not surprisingly, a dog’s olfactory lobe is much larger than ours is – a whopping 40x bigger!
There are some breeds that have better noses than others. Such breeds include the Bloodhound, Beagle, German Shepherd, Dachshund, Foxhound and Labrador Retriever (just to name a few)! Factors like snout length, number of olfactory glands, skin folds and ear length can attribute to better sense of smells. Dogs are so cool!
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