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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Dogs’ noses just got a bit more amazing. Not only are they up to 100 million times more sensitive than ours, they can sense weak thermal radiation—the body heat of mammalian prey, a new study reveals. The find helps explain how canines with impaired sight, hearing, or smell can still hunt successfully.
“It’s a fascinating discovery,” says Marc Bekoff, an ethologist, expert on canine sniffing, and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was not involved in the study. “[It] provides yet another window into the sensory worlds of dogs’ highly evolved cold noses.”
The ability to sense weak, radiating heat is known in only a handful of animals: black fire beetles, certain snakes, and one species of mammal, the common vampire bat, all of which use it to hunt prey.
Most mammals have naked, smooth skin on the tips of their noses around the nostrils, an area called the rhinarium. But dogs’ rhinaria are moist, colder than the ambient temperature, and richly endowed with nerves—all of which suggests an ability to detect not just smell, but heat.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Sunday March 01 2020, @04:50PM (1 child)
We can detect low grade heat emanations over our entire skin surface, just not to the same level that was demonstrated by the dog's cold nose.
I'm curious how much of this is specialization and how much is circumstance.
If you cool down a section of skin (as the dogs nose is cooled down) would it then be better able to detect the heat differential indicated?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 5, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday March 01 2020, @08:47PM
Yes, otherwise they'd be seeing the temperature of their own noses.
That's also why infrared telescopes are kept as cold as possible.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @05:28PM (3 children)
We should test liberals to see if they have any senses!
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @06:41PM (2 children)
Just like a dog, liberals have their nose up everyones ass.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @10:30PM
Well, when they have to sniff out conservative brains...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 02 2020, @04:20PM
Interesting. It seems that conservatives are so worried about what people do in their bedrooms. They want less government regulation, except when it comes to bedrooms.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday March 01 2020, @07:21PM
From the "how-does-he-smell-terrible" department, surely?
By the way, we don't serve time travellers in here.
A time traveller materialises in a bar.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday March 02 2020, @12:44PM
Certainly they controlled for the enhanced emission of odors by warm objects, no? Perhaps they should've put the object in an IR-transparent box.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 02 2020, @04:22PM
Can the TSA and CBP train dogs to sniff out USB thumb drives that contain pr0n that the government would not approve of?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.