If you ask your dog, we humans are nearly crippled. We’re practically nose-blind! Dogs, on the other hand, can get a whole lot of information just from the scent of something.
Are you constantly baffled as to why your dog chooses to sniff people in private places? Dogs actually have a special sex-sniffing organ in their noses. They can investigate strangers much more quickly with a nose to the crotch; family members and familiar humans may get an arm or leg sniff once they’ve passed the initial inspection.
With their complex sniffers, dogs get a lot more information out of a scent than people do. When your dog investigates a pile of poop, he can learn all sorts of important things!
- The sex of the pooper
- How dominant another male is
- If a female is in season or getting close
- How recently the other dog passed
- The health and emotional state of the pooper
For your dog, this is all really important information. It is better gossip than you could get from watching those celebrity-focused talk shows or in our Pop Culture Blog! He may not see the other neighborhood dogs, but he knows them thanks to his nose.
Part of why a pile of poop is so enticing is thanks to those same anal glands that can lead your dog to scoot his bottom on the rug. Just a few drops of liquid from the anal glands contain all kinds of scent information. Urine is the same way — it’s how dogs can mark their territory just by lifting a leg. To human noses it just smells bad. To canine noses, there are dozens of different scent-producing chemicals in there, just waiting to be deciphered.
As a side note, it’s probably not a great idea to let your dog go jamming his nose into every pile of poop he sees. Feces can carry parasites that you don’t want your dog exposed to.