Dogs don't like certain people and we finally know why !

Your dog is sometimes asocial, or even adopts hostile and aggressive behavior towards certain human beings ? It's normal, there is a scientific explanation for these canine mood swings.

Without you always being able to explain it, there are faces that your dog does not like. The neighbor on the landing, the vendor at the newsstand, the cyclist or jogger who brushes past you in the street... These people systematically irritate your four-legged friend, sometimes for no apparent reason. If dogs rely on their primary instinct and it is sometimes very difficult to know what is bothering them, scientists have nevertheless managed to understand the behavior and cognition of certain dogs : their sense of smell would be the cause.

Nearly 220 million olfactory receptors

In the scientific publication Discover, an American says that at the age of 12, his dog became aggressive when his neighbor approached their house. Later that same summer, the neighbor was arrested and later convicted on 10 pedophilia charges. "Nibbles sensed something sinister about our neighbor and was trying to protect his family," he said. According to studies carried out since 2005 by scientists, this sixth sense would be explained by the particularities and singularities of the dog's sense of smell. With 220 million olfactory receptors compared to 5 million in humans, their sense of smell would be around 35 times more developed than humans. "Dogs can not only smell things humans can't register, but they also apply more sense to the smells they sniff," Discover reads.

Dogs able to sense human emotions

By running MRI scans on dogs, scientists showed that dogs don't have large frontal lobes like humans, but "a huge olfactory bulb that takes up 10% of their brain". This not only allows them to smell things that humans cannot, but also to make sense of the smells they sniff on a daily basis. Also, the article also cites the observations of a canine behaviorist, who sought to understand why the dog she was studying bit some visitors and not others. The bite victims all had in common that they had eaten pizza, an odor that the dog associates with the danger of having been kicked by a pizza delivery boy when it was a puppy. Dogs also have the ability to sense human emotions and associate it with different cues like adrenaline, sweat, and body odor. Studies have also shown that dogs exposed to the smell of fear were more stressed. A 2018 study conducted with Labradors or Goldens Retrievers showed that dogs exposed to the smell of fear from certain humans displayed some stress, when others have shown service dogs can help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, or can even detect certain languages and understand them.