Dogs see their world through smell – and scientists are starting to translate it like never before

Scent is how dogs largely experience the world, a lot like the way we humans rely on sight. We know little about how dogs interpret scent, but thanks to a recent study, we may be getting closer to understanding what a dog’s nose actually knows.

Dogs are primed to detect smells. The average dog’s nose has more than 10 million scent receptors in their nose, compared to humans, who only have about 6 million.

This makes the canine nose more than 10, 000 times better at detecting scents than we are.