Dog's Sense of Smell

Imagine if each detail of our visual world were matched by a corresponding smell.

What would that be like?


Say for instance, each petal on a rose may be distinct, having been visited by insects leaving pollen footprints from faraway flowers. What is to us just a single stem actually holds a record of who held it, and when. A burst of chemicals marks where a leaf was torn. The flesh of the petals, plump with moisture compared to that of the leaf, holds a different odor besides. The fold of a leaf has a smell; so does a dewdrop on a thorn. And time is in those details; while we can see one of the petals drying and browning, the dog can smell this process of decay and aging. Imagine smelling every minute visual detail. That might be the experience of a rose to a dog.

The nose is also the fastest route by which information can get to the brain. While visual or auditory data goes through an intermediate staging ground on the way to the cortex, the highest level of processing, the receptors in the nose connect directly to nerves in specialized olfactory "bulbs" (so shaped). The olfactory bulbs of the dog brain make up about and eighth of its mass: proportionally greater than the size of our central visual processing center, the occipital lobes, in our brains. But dogs' specially keen sense of smell may also be due to an additional way they perceive odors: through the vomeronasal organ.

The vomeronasal organ, first discovered in reptiles, is a specialized sac above the mouth or in the nose covered with more receptor sites for molecules. The dog's vomeronasal organ sits above the roof (hard palate) of the mouth, along the floor of the nose (nasal septum). Unlike in other animals, the receptor sites are covered in cilia, tiny hairs encouraging molecules along. The vomeronasal organ is probably why a dog's nose is wet.

A hearty sniff not only brings molecules into the dog's nasal cavity; little molecular bits also stick onto the moist exterior tissue of the nose. Once there, they can dissolve and travel to the vomeronasal organ through interior ducts. In this way, dogs double their methods of smelling the world.

Excerpt from chapter four, Inside a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz.