by Audrey Frederick

Created on: May 23, 2008   Last Updated: September 10, 2009

In our world sight and hearing are far more important to us than our sense of smell. Granted the smell of fresh baked bread or a steak cooking on the grill can make us weak in the knees, but on the whole, smell is really not the most important thing in our lives.

In the lives of our cats and dogs smell is extremely important. A blind or deaf cat or dog can lead a fairly normal life as long as its nose is in working order.

From the very moment a puppy or kitten is born, smell becomes the most important part of their lives. A newborn can find mommy and its favorite nursing nipple just by smelling.

Dogs have a "superman" sense of smell, they have 280 million receptors that help them smell. Cats come n in a close second with 100 million receptors and the lowly human has only 20 million.

Cats and dogs use their sense of smell to "see" their world.

The ability to determine from a scent left by a visiting animal of when it was there, its state of health, sex and what kind of animal it was, is rather amazing. To us a pile of feces on the lawn is a mess to clean up; to your dog, it is filled with information about the dog that left it.

Sidewalks, trees, fire hydrants and plants provide all kinds of information for our cats and dogs about friends or foe that have been there. As hard as it is for us to realize that all those "nasty" moments of smelling, dogs do to each other, is a very important part of their communication.

We shake hand to size up a person, dogs use smell to do the same thing. Their behavior is perfectly acceptable in a dog's world and we, as humans need to come to terms with it and not be embarrassed. Actually, we should encourage it, as it helps to socialize your dog and it makes him/her happier.

Smell is so important in our pet's life that nature gave them 2 organs to detect smell with. The first one of course, is the nose. Their noses are constructed in a similar fashion to ours. Once the air enters the nose it is warmed and moistened and then some air is funneled into thin folds called the olfactory mucosa. This is where those millions of receptors are.

In order for you to understand the difference between our pets and we humans, when it comes to our smelling ability, let's discuss receptor sizes. Our 20 million receptors take up about square inch, our cat's 100 million take up to 6 square inches and our friend the dog, depending on breed size can take up to 20 square inches. That certainly explains the long noses some dogs have.

If you ever wondered

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