Dogs like the smell of their owners best

Neuroscientist Gregory Berns discovered that dogs will still recognize the smell of their owners even if they are not around. What’s even more interesting is that the way a dog’s brain reacts to other people and dogs is completely different from how it reacts to people close to it! In fact, to your dog, you smell like his favorite scent.

Dogs’ noses are more sensitive than humans

Just like particularly delicious food can allow us to establish a strong connection between taste and emotion, so can our family, work environment, etc. They all have their own unique flavor and evoke specific emotions in us. Most of the sensory information received by the dog's brain comes from smell. Since dogs have a much more sensitive sense of smell than humans, they react to smells more strongly than we do.

Scientists conducted an experiment on dogs’ sense of smell

In the experiment, Berns gave twelve dogs five different smells, and at the same time used advanced brain imaging to scan their brains to analyze them What do people think when they smell these smells? These smells are taken from the places on the bodies of humans and dogs with the strongest body odor, namely:

The dog’s own smell

The smell of a strange dog

The smell of another dog living with a dog

The smell of a stranger

The smell of someone living with a dog

Since the owners of these scents are not present at the experiment site, the experiment can also explore whether the dogs can remember different smells and identify them.

What dogs like most is the smell of their owners!

Judging from the experimental results, these five smells all caused certain brain activities, but the strongest emotional response only came from humans that dogs were familiar with. The second strongest source of reaction is familiarity with other dogs. In other words, dogs love the smell of home the most! Moreover, even if the owner is not present, the dogs can easily distinguish the owner's scent!

Also, dogs trained to be service and medical dogs have the strongest reactions to human scent. Part of the reason may be due to genes, because humans tend to choose such dogs to breed; it may also be due to the fact that people and dogs have established a closer connection during long-term training.
Berns concluded: “Dogs can not only distinguish familiar human odors, but also have a positive association with this odor. We think dogs are more interested in the smell of other dogs, but In fact, dogs' reward response is only reserved for humans they are familiar with. However, we don't know whether this is due to instinct, food, play communication, or other reasons."