Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Do Dogs Smell In Color?

Sure, that sounds like a pretty silly question, but let me add a little change of context.

This thought occurred to me the other day as I was considering how much better a dog's sense of smell is than a human's.  I couldn't help but think it would suck horribly, I mean consider smelling something rotten, then multiply that.  Not so rad.  Dogs have a very broad "spectrum of smells", let's say, allowing them to also pick out smaller more localized odors, such as a drug dog, or dogs which are trained to identify cancer.

Senses are pretty amazing, since they're actually a process of interpreting an experience or stimuli.  So while we can be ever so sure that red is red... there are other humans out there which see something different.  If that was what they learned to be red, then it would all be peachy-keen(well for the most part).  So we see in colors, a broad spectrum in which we are able to distinguish between very small differences in wavelengths of light and their interactions with our eyes.  Your nose works in a similar way, reacting to molecules and generating an odor or scent.  Without a nose(the very idea of what a nose represents), things don't have an odor.  Think about it though, seriously.  They don't.

Anyways, my thought is like this; Maybe we can best understand a dog's sense of smell through our understanding of our sense of color and in some ways sight(like using scent to track something).  Which brings me to one of my favorite thoughts -
One sees the world through a lens of oneself, but through We, may one hope to see beyond themselves, and appreciate the beauty of Us.

Alturiigo, minding my T's and Q's

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