How does a dog fing things he can't see or smell?

Question

Recently some detection dogs were found to be able to find objects they could not see or smell...How is that possible?

Dogjudge is on the right track...good going!

The study I saw showed dogs finding drugs inside Bell Jars that were covered....inside a Bell Jar is a vacuum ...any leakage is inward...and they were covered.....the dogs found the drugs 85% of the time repeatedly .....how?....any spectulation?

Answer 1

First of all they can still use their other senses, such as their sense of hearing.

Their sense of smell is way beyond that of humans. I have someone I know in Florida, Duane Pickel. Duane had a Miniature Schnauzer that he trained to be a cancer detection dog. In that case, the dog is smelling the cancer.

They have dogs that can detect when people are going to have seizures. Animals, in general, can tell when earthquakes are going to happen BEFORE they occur. Who knows exactly what these dogs are using for mechanisms to detect these things. Does the person give off a smell? Do the dogs hear something we can't hear?

During college, I did some work with birds and their ability to navigate when they migrate. It has been proven that birds can use the stars and the sun to navigate. BUT, it has also been proven that they can detect magnetic fields and use those magnetic fields to navigate.

To test it, they use homing pigeons with little electromagnets on top of their heads. When the birds are released with the field going one way, the birds will go in a particular direction. When they reverse the magnetic field, the bird will reverse it's direction.

So is this one of the things that dogs use when they get lost 1,000 miles from home and they eventually find their way home?

Once we can sit down and talk to them, we'll find out.

Answer 2

Years a go we used to do demos at the prison of the dogs ability to find drugs as as to discourage prisoners from thinking about bringing any in the prison. We used to take pot and put it in a little film container and close it. The container was airtight, no chance for odor to leak. That container was then placed in glass coffe pot full of water. A little while later the dogs were brought in and did a search. The dog always found the drugs and the prisoners got the idea.
Of cource, we knew there is no way the dogs would find the drugs as they were hidden. What the dogs were alerting on and what the prisoners never knew was that there is odor on the OUTSIDE of the glass coffee pot because the handler had it on his hands when he handled the weed that he took from the bag. When he touched the glass pot, the oils from the weed got on and stayed on the glass.
I am curently handling 2 bomb detection dogs and even though I have been doing this for long time, I am still surprised every day about their ability to find things that are so well hidden that you would swear there is no way any dog could ever find.

Answer 3

Not sure I believe that although dogs do have a great built-in GPS system and can find their way home from long distances sometimes. My guess is that the dogs detected things WE cannot see or smell but their sense of smell is much more developed than ours. Some dogs don't have great eye sight though.

Answer 4

How about the feeling of hot and cold? We have all passed through warm and cold spots while swimming in the ocean.
A human gives off warmth, and liquid is cool, especiallyif it's alcohol or other solvents, for example.
Now, you'd have to be pretty close to these things to be able to feel them-for US.
For a dog, their senses are many times sharper than ours, including the EARS and that is my second answer to this question.
And these dogs are trained for this kind of thing. And if one is focused on finding something-anything- they usually do.

Answer 5

They can smell things for very long distance's so maybe they thought the dog could smell it but, did. Otherwise they wouldn't know it was there

Answer 6

Dogs have to smell to find something.

Answer 7

maybe thats not totally true!