The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Did You Know That Dogs Can Tell Time with Their Snouts? The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Did You Know That Dogs Can Tell Time with Their Snouts?

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Did You Know That Dogs Can Tell Time with Their Snouts?


The theory has been around for some time, but a new book backs up the idea that 'dogs smell time’.

“As each day wears a new smell, its hours mark changes in odors that your dog can notice,” explains Professor Alexandra Horowitz, founder of Barnard College's Dog Cognition Lab.

The dog expert makes the claim in her new book 'Being A Dog'.

While for most humans, the world is primarily visual, for dogs, their world is based on scents.

Dogs are often used to sniff out drugs, explosives, disaster victims, dead bodies and even cancers, thanks to their extraordinary power of smell.  

Even for humans, scents can give clues as to what time of day it is, such as the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning.

Professor Horowitz believes that dogs can detect subtle changes in scent during the day, giving them a sense of time.

“Smells in a room change as the day goes on. Hot air rises, and it usually rises in currents along the walls and will rise to the ceiling and go kind of to the center of the room and drop,” she explains in an interview with Fresh Air.

“I think dogs can smell that through the air movement in a room” she said. 

This could explain why a dog knows when its owner is due to return home. 

If the dog is able to detect the level of its owner's diminishing scent since they left the house, they may be able to predict roughly when they are due to come back.


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