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The nose of dogs has an asset that was previously unknown

A study claims that dogs’ noses have another quality that was previously unknown. Already renowned for its exceptional smell, it could also detect heat, according to the journal Science.

Dogs, whose noses are already up to 100 million times more sensitive than ours, are able to detect weak thermal radiation, the body heat of their prey, reveals a new study the summary of which was published by the journal Science.

This discovery helps explain how dogs with vision, hearing or smell problems manage to hunt successfully.

Until now, this same ability used to hunt prey has only been attributed to black beetles, certain snakes and a species of bat, the common vampire.

Most mammals have smooth, hairless skin at the tip of their noses and around the nostrils, in the area called the rhinarium. In dogs, it is moist, cooler than room temperature and rich in nerves, which suggests an ability to not only detect odors, but also the heat.

The hypothesis put to the test

To verify this basic premise, researchers from the Swedish University of Lund and the Hungarian University Eötvös Loránd trained three companion dogs to choose between a hot object (31 ° C) and an object at room temperature, each placed at 1.6 meters. Dogs could not see or feel the difference between these objects. After their training, they were tested on their skills and all three managed to detect objects emitting weak thermal radiation.

Next, the researchers scanned the brains of 13 dogs of different breeds in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner showing them objects emitting neutral or weak thermal radiation. The left somatosensory cortex in the dogs brain, which receives information from the nose, was more sensitive to warm thermal stimulus than neutral.

Researchers assume that dogs inherited this ability from their ancestor, the gray wolf, capable of sniffing the body heat of its prey during hunting.

Pennsylvania State University professor Gary Settles, who has studied dogs’ sense of smell, however, doubts “that the rhinarium of dogs can distinguish hot and cold objects from a distance”, suggesting that this ability could be unnecessary for long distance hunting.

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