My Dog Can Smell Time?

Your pooch can probably anticipate day-to-day events pretty accurately, from predicting when the kids or adults are about to come home to meal times. However, their sense of time can be complex. In other words, yes, dogs can “smell time.”

What is Smelling Time?

Though you experience your surroundings visually, pups notice shifts through their sense of smell. Because of this, your pal can make predictions based on patterns they have sensed with their excellent sense of smell. In other words, dogs understand time through their noses. For example, when you leave the house each day, the smell of you in the house lessens the longer you are gone. Your furry friend can detect this difference and then learns when you will return based on the weakened smell. While your four-legged friend can’t read a clock, they are incredibly aware of your routine and schedule. 

How Does Smelling Time Work?

If you have ever wondered how dogs follow a scent trail, it is because they follow where the smell is the weakest to where it is the strongest. This leads them from the oldest location to the most recent one because the scent is more potent. Dogs can smell new and old scents, meaning that they can detect events across various time intervals. Your pup’s sense of smell helps them understand the passage of time. They can detect the changing air currents, molecules, and odors that humans are not capable of. Dogs have much more sensitive noses because they have hundreds of millions more scent receptor cells than we do. 

It may seem strange, but dogs rely on their sense of smell in many different ways. However, we only understand a fraction of what their strong noses are capable of detecting.