If you’ve ever been around a dog you’ve likely noticed them stick their nose in the air and begin sniffing. What you may not have known is that a dog's sense of smell is so heightened that the information they are sniffing in is even richer than visual information to humans. It’s been estimated that many dogs' sense of smell is between 100,000 and one million times more sensitive than our own sense of smell.
The sniffing process starts with pulling air through membranes that are about 30 times larger than a humans. There, receptors are linked to the brain by more than 100 times as many nerves as us. There, the part of the dog's brain dedicated to processing the sense of smell is forty times larger than our own.
Some breeds even have greater sniffing advantages. The long ears of a bloodhound actually droop to the ground and drag up odors to better reach their nose. It’s been noted that dogs can identify a single fingerprint that was touched three weeks prior. Talk about expert trackers!
