Have you ever noticed that your four-legged friend growls in the presence of certain people? Or do you tend to annoy the dogs you meet? Rest assured: there is a scientific explanation for this. According to Geo, which takes up studies carried out by researchers, the sense of smell of canines is infinitely more developed than ours. Thus, our friends the dogs have up to 220 or even 300 million olfactory receptors, while humans have only 5 to 6 million. This allows them to detect odors that are 50 times less concentrated than us.
“However, thanks to MRIs, researchers have shown that dogs do not have a large frontal lobe like humans, but a kind of olfactory bulb that occupies 10% of their brain. Dogs can thus smell things that humans cannot, but also save them”, specifies the photo and travel magazine. Thus, our little companions give meaning to the smells they sniff, by associating them with behaviors, for example. “They collect and store the information,” concludes Geo.
Discover magazine, for its part, reports a very disturbing incident that occurred in the United States. A man says: “When I was about 12 years old, I was standing on the porch of my family’s house with our Border Collie, Nibbles, when a stranger approached. He smiled, asked if my mother was home, then pushed open the door. Nibbles went wild: he barked, growled, and threw his whole body against the door.”
The stranger left the property, and the teenager claims to have never seen his dog get so angry. A few weeks later, the man in question, who turned out to be a neighbor, was arrested for a dozen acts of pedophilia. “Nibbles sensed something sinister about our neighbor and sought to protect his family,” the witness concluded.
