Researchers have recently collected sweat and breath samples from people under various stress conditions. They then gave them to dogs for them to smell. The dogs were able to distinguish between the two samples correctly at 93.8%. (Photo by Rob Kleine, Flickr under CC License).
Stress can be smelled
Research shows that dogs can sense emotions and smell differently, thereby distinguishing the owner’s state. The study did not focus on the smells, but how dogs interact with people.
” CNN” reported that the most recent research aims to determine if dogs can assess the health of humans based on their “smell”. As samples, the researchers took the participants’ sweat and breath. After that, the researchers administered a mental maths task to the participants, asking them to guess the correct answer. Then, they collected a second round of smell samples.
Wilson, a Ph.D. student at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, was the lead author of the study. He stated that only 93.8% could correctly distinguish between the two samples after many rounds of testing. This means that “people are stressed.” It is evident that the smell from the bottom is distinct from normal, so at least the can distinguish it.
Assist with clinical psychotherapy
Expert in animal clinical science, Freeman stated that dogs have 220 million olfactory sensors, compared to 50 million in humans. Dogs’ keen sense of smell could be due to their ability to detect prey and threats and promote harmony, love, and other needs.
Wilson stated that dogs are able to identify stress and emotions, and there are many service dogs who can assist doctors in diagnosing patients with mental disorders like anxiety. She also acknowledged that further experiments are necessary to verify whether these findings can be used in the real world.