Your sense of smell is much stronger than you think

My dog spends a lot of time sniffing the ground with her adorable little nose. She doesn’t care what she finds: grass, cement, flowers, fire hydrants, poop, trash cans, fences, buildings — it’s all an exciting adventure of scents to her.

And when you see that kind of behavior — not just from dogs, but plenty of other mammals — it’s easy to assume that those species must have a better sense of smell than people. After all, I don’t spend my mornings walking up to the mail person and sniffing them before accepting my mail.

If you also made the assumption that humans are subpar sniffers, you’re not alone. This myth is pretty widespread. To figure out where the idea came from, we spoke to Dr. John McGann who recently released a paper that...

Continue reading…