Several hours later, when he was wrapping up, we came back and parked the car. I took her walking around the neighborhood. She was trotting along with her nose in the air until we got to the spot where he had been standing. She stopped, dropped her nose to the ground and followed his movement around the lot.
In a busy street in the city, she was able to find where he had stood for a few minutes several hours before. This is so encouraging as it shows just how strong her nose is (or says something about his feet, but we are going to keep this positive).
Nova shares some staggering facts in an article in 2012:
* Dogs' noses are 10,000 - 100,000 times as acute as ours.
* "If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well."
* If we can smell a teaspoon of sugar in our coffee, they can smell a teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized pools' worth of water.
* They have up to 300,000,000 olfactory receptors (compared to our rather pathetic 5,000,000).
* When dogs exhale, they expel air through slits on the side of their nose and are able to continue bringing fresh air in while exhaling, allowing them to inhale/smell continuously for up to 40 seconds.
* Dogs can wiggle their nostrils independently.
It is so amazing that her adorable nose is so darned perceptive.
