To a dog, you stink
As clean as you are, and as much soap and perfume and deodorant you wear, you are still splendidly stinky to your dog. Every human has a unique scent fingerprint, and that’s pretty much everything a dog needs to tell one person from another. “To our dogs, we are our scent,” says canine cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz, author of the enlightening book, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know. In that book, she writes this wonderful description about a dog’s sense of smell:
“Humans stink. The human armpit is one of the most profound sources of odor produced by any animal; our breath is a confusing melody of smells; our genitals reek. The organ that covers our body — our skin — is itself covered in sweat and sebaceous glands, which are regularly churning out fluid and oils holding our particular brand of scent. When we touch objects, we leave a bit of ourselves on them; a slough of skin, with its clutch of bacteria steadily munching and excreting away. This is our smell, our signature odor.”
Key takeaway Dogs sniff people’s crotches because of the sweat glands, also known as apocrine glands, that are located there. Sniffing these glands gives a dog information about a person such as their age, sex, mood, and mating probability.
There’s nothing more embarrassing than introducing your dog to a new group of people and them proceeding to sniff between every guest’s legs. It’s not uncommon to see your dog smelling your and other people’s crotch from time to time, but it sure is uncomfortable, and it probably has you wondering, “why do dogs want to smell your crotch?”.
The answer is actually quite simple. The reason your dog is smelling your crotch has to do with your sweat glands, specifically your apocrine glands. These glands release pheromones that your dog smells in order to gather information about another mammal. These pheromones convey all sorts of information to a dog, including age, sex, mood, and if that mammal can mate.1
This is also why you often see dogs smelling each other’s rear ends. Dogs have apocrine glands all over their body, but mostly near their genitals and anus. A human’s apocrine glands are located in their armpits and genitals, hence why your dog smells your crotch– because they essentially want to learn more about you.
In this article, we’ll be answering various questions about your dog’s nose, such as “why do dogs smell your crotch?”, “how do you prevent your dog from sniffing people’s crotches?”, and more.
Is it normal for a dog to sniff your crotch?
Yes, although it might be awkward, it’s completely normal for a dog to sniff your crotch. Dogs rely heavily on their noses and have a much more sensitive sense of smell than humans, so they’re naturally more attracted to sweaty parts of the body, like the groin area.
A dog will sniff your crotch simply because they are curious about you and want to learn more about your age, sex, and mood. There are training techniques you can use to discourage your dog from doing this but it is a natural thing for them to do.
Why do Dogs Sniff your Private Parts or your Crotch? Discover the reason WHY? || Monkoodog
Dogs aren’t well-versed in the world of human boundaries, especially when it comes to using their nose. They often greet a new dog with a quick sniff of a rear end, so that often extends to how they greet a new human. Dogs will shove their noses into a human’s crotch, owner or guest, with no hesitation. While the invasive sniffing can be embarrassing, especially if your dog does it to a visitor, it’s their way of saying hello and learning about someone.
A dog’s nose is a powerful tool. Dogs have up to 300 million scent sensors in their noses, compared to humans who only have 6 million. This means that their sense of smell is 10,000 times greater than ours. According to an analogy by Michael T. Nappier, DVM, DABVP, of the Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, dogs can “detect the equivalent of a 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.”
Dogs even have a special organ specifically dedicated to processing smells called Jacobson’s organ, or the vomeronasal organ. The organ, located above the roof of the mouth, plays an important role in how a dog interprets smell. It is connected to the scent-dedicated part of the dog’s brain, which is about 40 times larger than that of a human. This is why dogs are used to sniff out drugs, bombs, cancer, insulin levels, bed bugs, and more.