Test a dog's smell

atkin

I do not own a dog. I want to test how powerful their sense of smell .Can anyone enlighten me.
I thought of an idea to get a small piece of meat perhaps, show it to the dog to smell .Then hide it in the garden or house and see if it can find it. We assume it finds the meat reward it with the meat .The next step wrap the meat in cellophane making sure your hands are clean after as it can smell minute traces.
I would continue this wrapping the meat until it either gets bored or cannot find it. You can leave it for a day and the smell will permeate so return and see if it can then find.
Just a simple experiment.

The One Who Knocks

Alternatively, fart and see how far they run.

meoklmrk91

atkin wrote: »

I do not own a dog. I want to test how powerful their sense of smell .Can anyone enlighten me.
I thought of an idea to get a small piece of meat perhaps, show it to the dog to smell .Then hide it in the garden or house and see if it can find it. We assume it finds the meat reward it with the meat .The next step wrap the meat in cellophane making sure your hands are clean after as it can smell minute traces.
I would continue this wrapping the meat until it either gets bored or cannot find it. You can leave it for a day and the smell will permeate so return and see if it can then find.
Just a simple experiment.

Any dog would be pretty quick to get both tbh, might take a couple of tries for them to figure out what it's all about but after that they would have no problem.

DBB

There's plenty of research which has measured the dog's scenting ability: it is vital for law enforcement agencies which utilise detection dogs to be aware of! And indeed, search and rescue workers, dogs used to detect illness etc.
I will also put it to you that if you run your experiment as described on a dog, it will take no time at all for the dog to associate the smell of human + the smell of cellophane (or whatever you decide to wrap the meat in) with the enclosed meat, even if the smell of meat from the package is negligible.

muddypaws

How would you manage to get the cellophane off before the dog ate it, along with the meat?

A good book to read is "Inside of A Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know" by Alexandra Horowitz.

There have been many, many experiments and trials around dogs' sense of smell, just goggle and you'll find a lot of information.

For interest, what would you experiment prove, would you do it with different dogs, to see if each dog was different, with different animals, to see if a dog has a better sense of smell than a cat?

atkin

muddypaws wrote: »

How would you manage to get the cellophane off before the dog ate it, along with the meat?

A good book to read is "Inside of A Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know" by Alexandra Horowitz.

There have been many, many experiments and trials around dogs' sense of smell, just goggle and you'll find a lot of information.

For interest, what would you experiment prove, would you do it with different dogs, to see if each dog was different, with different animals, to see if a dog has a better sense of smell than a cat?

I never associated cats with having a good sense of smell. To train them seems an impossible task

muddypaws

atkin wrote: »

I never associated cats with having a good sense of smell. To train them seems an impossible task

But how would you quantify your experiment if you're not going to test it against any other species? What could you say, a dog has a good sense of smell - compared to what?

atkin

muddypaws wrote: »

How would you manage to get the cellophane off before the dog ate it, along with the meat?

A good book to read is "Inside of A Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know" by Alexandra Horowitz.

There have been many, many experiments and trials around dogs' sense of smell, just goggle and you'll find a lot of information.

For interest, what would you experiment prove, would you do it with different dogs, to see if each dog was different, with different animals, to see if a dog has a better sense of smell than a cat?

Use gloves and change the wrapping material. Pressure seal a jar as you would for making jam. A lead canister can be used to go even further . Yes it would have your scent on the meat forgot to mention gloves which are changed each test.

atkin

muddypaws wrote: »

But how would you quantify your experiment if you're not going to test it against any other species? What could you say, a dog has a good sense of smell - compared to what?

I can think of a reason.... A more except able reason is the containment of radiation. The ability of a substance to permeate . I wish I had my SPP2 now. Well if lived in Japan near that broken reactor, I would buy one. Assuming the dog at this point smells through a concave pressure jar with cellophane wrapping . The end result can a dog smell through lead and how thick does it need to be best way to join it and seal. Look I want to prove Myth busters wrong. The fly in the million whatever years resin is not so pure what does the dog smell ? ...

Driveby Dogboy

"Doctor Doctor, my dogs got no nose"

and the doctor says: "How does he smell?"







Terrible

muddypaws

You edited your post after I posted, so I've edited mine.

DBB

Atkin, if you can convince me by pm that your rationale for posting as you have here is genuine, I may consider reopening it. But I'll need a LOT of convincing.
If you are genuine, I'd suggest you start by reading the research referred to above by both me and muddypaws. I'd imagine that was one of Mythbusters' starting points too.
Thanks,
DBB