The Nose Knows

Dogs have about twenty times the amount of smell receptors that humans have. We’ve heard of bomb sniffing dogs, but dog noses are being used for much more.

Law enforcement and public safety

Police dogs are trained to distinguish between hundreds of objects including narcotics, weapons, explosives, currency, and people. Dogs are used to check public places such as baseball stadiums to ensure the safety of thousands. One bomb could cause a tragic catastrophe, but bomb sniffing dogs prevent the worst from happening. Drug sniffing dogs can find illegal substances in luggage, cars, and lockers. Dogs can even sniff out large amounts of stolen money.

Rescue

Thousands of lives have been saved by the power of smell. Bloodhounds are used to track missing persons due to their heightened sense of smell which is aided by their drooping ears which funnel the scent to the dog’s nose. They have been known to accurately track a person for miles. Rescue dogs are always kept close to ski lodges in case of an avalanche. The dogs are set free to search for buried skiers while their handlers puncture the snow with long poles to help bring the scent to the surface. When the Twin Towers collapsed in 2001, dogs were used to sniff out people trapped in the debris. Their handlers have said that it was hard to get the dogs to stop searching at the end of the day because they were so determined to find the missing people.


More

Hunters have been using dogs to find game for years, but people are finding more uses for the dog’s powerful nose. Customs agents are using canines to find stowaway animals which could cause ecological damage in a foreign land. Just recently, dogs have even been used to diagnose cancer. Since cancerous cells have a slightly different scent than healthy cells, dogs have been employed to sniff out the exact location of cancerous tumors.

As you watch your dog sniff the ground to search for a nearby squirrel, remember all the dogs in the world that are using the same technique to save lives and keep the world safe.