I find it extremely interesting that well trained sniffer dogs can differentiate between a corpse and a living

Question

person, I would love to know how this is the case. Can a dog smell a dead body who has been dead for 15 minutes? why would a dead body of 15 minutes smell any different than a living person.

Answer 1

A dog`s nose can be up to 40 times as sensitive as that of a humans,,,,,They are trained to either wag their tails or indicate by scratching at the point of highest intensity of odour...
A dead body will start to decompose almost immediately but needs to be dead for 2 hours to start to give of the right smells....Gasses start to build up in the body and blood will go rank and congeal,all this and much more combine to give of a differing smell to that of the living....The gasses and odours will leach into the surrounding woodwork and the grout between the tiles of the typical Spanish/Portuguese house,,soft furnishings will absorb some of the odours as well...If you have ever smelt a dead body you will long remember the scent,,,,

Answer 2

It's not strange at all. Dogs can be trained to smell pre-cancerous cells with complete accuracy and know the difference between healthy and dead flesh. As a former nurse I've seen people die and the second the life goes the skin assumes an odd 'waxy' appearance and begins to smells differently immediately, so I imagine any dog would smell that even if not trained to do so.

Answer 3

The Happy Murcia explained it all so well...i have to admit to wondering about how they could distinguish between the living and dead too... and since I'm assuming the hotel complex would know if there was a previous death in that apartment I'm wondering just how old the scent can be and the dogs still pick it up?

Answer 4

dogs have an amazing sense of smell and can be trained to smell lots of things, from drugs to skin cancer and even death. the body would have to have been dead and lain in situ for two hours before eminating the smell the trained dog could detect. I don't know what the scent is but am sure you could find it on the internet somewhere.
clever aren't they?

Answer 5

I think they can smell bodies only if they have been dead for at least two hours. When you die you will release different chemicals which is what the dogs smell.

Answer 6

Living people have their own indivual scent. Dead bodies all smell the same. A dog, who is much more sensitive to smell than a human can, if trained to do so, identify the scent of a death.

Answer 7

Dogs can be trained to sniff out a variety of things from drugs to people. The dogs you are referring to are called cadaver dogs.
These dogs are trained in detecting the odour of decomposing bodies. Dogs' noses are so sensitive that they are even capable of detecting bodies that are under running water.
A dead body gives of a different scent from a living one and these dogs can tell the difference, yes, these dogs are that clever.

Answer 8

As I understand it, a dog is trained to find one thing, i.e., drug dogs are taught to "alert" on drugs, search dogs are taught to find someone based on their scent, cadaver dogs are taught to alert on the "smell" of death.

What I don't know is how far along in decomposition the corpse must be to bring in the cadaver dogs, because search dogs (I believe) will trail a person to his/her body as long as there is a fresh scent nearby.

Answer 9

Chemicals produced by the dead body can be identified by a trained dog.

Answer 10

Two of the compounds produced by a body after death are called putrescine and cadaverine...and once smelled, never forgotten! A dog could dectect these very easily and a very low concentrations.