Just follow your nose

Dogs' sensitive sense of smell provides their four-legged friends with a lot of information, whether when hunting or looking for a partner.

Dogs’ sensitive sense of smell provides their four-legged friends with a lot of information, whether when hunting or looking for a partner. PixieMe – stock.adobe.com

When it comes to smelling, many animals are way ahead of us. It's not just about perceiving the environment, but also about communicating with other animals, enemies or prey

Text: Ralf Stork

Gala evenings, television appearances and an entry in the Guinness Book of Records: Wild boar Luise achieved a certain level of fame in Germany in the 1980s. Luise was the world's first official service pig in the police, which gave the press the best headlines: “The police are in trouble.”

The trainer for special dogs at the police in Lower Saxony wanted to find out in a practical test how suitable a pig like this is for police work and whether it could perhaps be used to compensate for a small weakness of the search dogs: When it's hot, dogs start to pant regulate their body temperature. The ability to smell suffers as a result. With pigs there is this limitation when searching

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