Can dogs smell dead animals? Get Your Pet Thinking

He’s Showing Off to Other Dogs

If your pup is rolling around in dead animals or other gross things (like his own poop), he may want to signal to his canine friends that he’s found something interesting. He’s just trying to say to them, “There’s something near here that’s tasty!” by appealing to their sense of smell.

Can dogs smell dead animals?

Can dogs smell dead animals?

Behaviorists may argue that dogs like rolling around in dead animals because they’re marking their territory by leaving their scent behind. Dogs produce scents behind their ears as well as on their paw pads, so if your dog is scratching at a dead fish’s body or rolling his head around in it, then he could be marking. He could also mark it by urinating on it to signal to other dogs or the rest of the pack that the carcass is his.

When dogs roll around in animal carcasses, it may just be because they’re having fun. This rolling behavior could increase your doggie’s dopamine levels, which brings him pleasure. If your dog is also snorting while rolling around, then chances are, he’s having a blast.

Can dogs smell dead animals?

Can dogs smell dead animals?

Let’s say your dog has rolled around in an animal carcass, feces, or some other smelly stuff. As a pet parent, you’ll need to bathe him right away. Hose him down and use dog shampoo to get out the smell. Never use human shampoo, as it’s not formulated for dogs and could harm him.

Between baths, you can put baking soda on your dog’s fur and then let it sit for five minutes before brushing it out. Note that shampoo and baking soda will never fully eradicate your dog’s natural scent and that you should only bathe your pup when he needs it. Excessive bathing can result in your dog’s natural oils being stripped as well as itchy skin and a dull and dry coat. If your dog is very smelly or his hair is matted, you can always take him to a groomer for professional help.

Of course, when it comes to training cadaver dogs, nothing beats the real, gruesome thing. Trainers can bring dogs to outdoor forensic decomposition laboratories, like Western Carolina University or the Penn Vet Working Dog Center to practice finding actual dead bodies. As with all dog training, sniffing out cadavers comes down to manipulating the dogs’ “response and reward systems” through positive reinforcement.

Despite the fact that a dog’s sense of smell is 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive than a humans, these dogs still need to put in a lot of practice — the training process usually spans from 18 months to two years. But all that time and dogged sniffing pays off: When it comes to finding a corpse buried deep underground — even if it’s “hundreds of years old,” according to cadaver dog expert Cat Warren — these death-sniffing pups are still more effective than any machine. More like this

Training requires a lot of exposure to a lot of putrid odors, but acquiring isolated versions of those odors isn’t easy. That’s why there’s a macabre realm of science research focusing on identifying the smells that leach out of the dead — and isolating them for dogs (and their humans) to identify.

These dogs have their work cut out for them. Unlike drug- or bomb-sniffing dogs that just need to identify a few specific scents, cadaver dogs must learn to identify hundreds.

Many of these scents are likely identifiable only by trained dogs, but a few will stick out even to the common human nose: cadaverine, putrescine, skatole, and indole. As Inverse has explained in the past, these compounds smell particularly rank:

As mentioned above, cadaver dogs are dogs that are specifically trained to sniff out cadavers that are at different stages of death. They are exposed to the stench of decaying and freshly dead bodies via synthetic means through training during puppyhood so by the time they are adult dogs, they already know and are familiar with these smells, allowing them to pick up on them easily. They can then alert humans and identify the spot where the smell is emanating from.

Even today, many dogs are used in industries such as the military, law enforcement, farm environment, and oil and gas companies because of their excellent sense of smell. With cadaver dogs, training begins when they are little and this enables them to become excellent assistants to law enforcement officers that deal with possible homicide cases.

There are many things that dogs have become known for over the years. This includes their loyalty, their intelligence, and their companionship. Another thing that they are renowned for is their excellent sense of smell, which has resulted in them becoming a key part of many industries. They are used for all sorts of purposes from sniffing out rodents through to detecting gas or as sniffer dogs for drugs officers.

The whole subject of dogs sniffing out dead bodies is a morbid and dark one, but they do play a crucial role in the world of crime detection. In fact, dogs have been used to sniff out cadavers in a number of high-profile cases over recent years and thanks to their hard work and sense of smell, a number of convictions have been made. These dogs are highly trained from puppyhood to pick up on the smell of cadavers, although this is done through artificial smells that are created especially for this purpose. This then sets them up for work as official cadaver dogs.

For example, some dogs will get into a sitting position at the spot where the smell has been identified while others may start scraping at the area with their paws. Some dogs simply stare at the spot where they detect the smell and are very intense when they do this. Others may bark and whine when they pick up on the scent of a cadaver.

Why Do Dogs Roll in Smelly Stuff? | Dogs Rolling in Poop & Dead Animals

In mid-July, a frustrating search for four missing men in Bucks County, Pennsylvania ended with the discovery of Dean Finocchiaro’s corpse buried in a suburban farm. The grisly unearthing led the killer, Cosmo Dinard, to confess to the murders of all four men. Though solving the crime required about 50 law enforcement investigators and the FBI, the it couldn’t have been done without the cadaver dogs. They managed to sniff out Finocchiaro’s body, even though it was buried 12 and a half feet underground.

These dogs have their work cut out for them. Unlike drug- or bomb-sniffing dogs that just need to identify a few specific scents, cadaver dogs must learn to identify hundreds.

Training requires a lot of exposure to a lot of putrid odors, but acquiring isolated versions of those odors isn’t easy. That’s why there’s a macabre realm of science research focusing on identifying the smells that leach out of the dead — and isolating them for dogs (and their humans) to identify.

When cadaver pups first start out, they practice not with real corpses but with synthetic cadaver scents. These are a real thing: the chemical giant Sigma-Aldrich makes three different corpse scents for canine training, including “recently dead,” “decomposed,” and “drowned victim.” But when it comes to the scent of dead bodies, nothing beats the real, multifarious stench.

Human bodies decompose in five basic stages, and each of those stages produces dozens of different odors. In an attempt to classify them, researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee teamed up with the FBI to build a “decompositional odor analysis database.” In a 2004 article in the Journal of Forensic Science, they explained their process: First, they buried four bodies in graves between 1.5 and 3.5 feet deep and, over the course of the next year and a half, used traps to capture the air that emanated from the rotting bodies through the ground. After analyzing 374 samples from the graves, they found out just how many volatile chemicals the human body makes when it decomposes: a whopping 424.

Many of these scents are likely identifiable only by trained dogs, but a few will stick out even to the common human nose: cadaverine, putrescine, skatole, and indole. As Inverse has explained in the past, these compounds smell particularly rank:

Complicating the smell of death is the fact that the environment in which a corpse decays affects what odors are produced. In 2016, researchers from the University of Leicester reported that soft tissue that decomposes in the absence of oxygen breaks down differently than soft tissue in the presence of oxygen; in other words, corpses in the ground and above ground rot differently. Studying gas samples taken from pig hearts, the researchers found that decomposition in oxygen-free settings produces a lot more of indole, while the presence of oxygen tends to lead to high levels of acetone.

Of course, when it comes to training cadaver dogs, nothing beats the real, gruesome thing. Trainers can bring dogs to outdoor forensic decomposition laboratories, like Western Carolina University or the Penn Vet Working Dog Center to practice finding actual dead bodies. As with all dog training, sniffing out cadavers comes down to manipulating the dogs’ “response and reward systems” through positive reinforcement.

Despite the fact that a dog’s sense of smell is 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive than a humans, these dogs still need to put in a lot of practice — the training process usually spans from 18 months to two years. But all that time and dogged sniffing pays off: When it comes to finding a corpse buried deep underground — even if it’s “hundreds of years old,” according to cadaver dog expert Cat Warren — these death-sniffing pups are still more effective than any machine. More like this