WHAT THE NOSE KNOWS

It was a hot summer’s day when Dr Samuel Johnson, author of “A Dictionary of the English Language” paused to rest on a London park bench. His profusely sweating body caused a young woman sitting next to him to accuse him of smelling. “No, Madam,” he replied. “You smell, I stink.” and thereby turned a casual exchange into a lesson in English grammar, smell being the verb and stink the adjective.

Strangers in close proximity feel a paradoxical urge to both speak and say nothing at the same time with formulas like: How’s it going? You OK? Doing good? to which the answer is often the single word “good” expressed unemotionally and aimed at terminating the exchange as quickly as possible.

Dogs in close proximity are utterly different and with a sense of smell that puts humans to shame. Dogs sniffing dogs can identify the latest meals eaten, the where and when of different locations, the emotions of fear or aggression, sexual interest, pregnancy, health, contact to other animals and humans,... and probably much more!

By different estimates a dogs’ sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute as their owners. “Let’s suppose they’re just 10,000 times better,” says James Walker, former director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, who, with several colleagues, came up with an estimate during a rigorously designed, oft-cited study. “If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well.”

Or put another way, while we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in a million gallons of water, or the equivalent of two Olympic-sized pools.

The English language hints at our often underrated sense of smell. We say that something ‘smells fishy’ or we ‘smell a rat’ if a person or situation feels suspicious. We ‘sniff around’ if we want to get a feeling for a new situation, and we ‘follow our nose’ if we sense that a given direction is likely to lead to success.

But we still have a lot to learn from ‘Man’s Best Friend’. When engaging with strangers it’s worth applying the doggy acronym S.T.O.P. “Smell The Other Person”, not literally of course, as this can lead to misunderstandings and even unwanted grammar lessons, but in the sense of making new friends;... now there’s a strategy not to be sniffed at!

Paul Smith
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