Two gorgeous German Shepherds sensing that someone’s coming! It’s just amazing how superior their senses are compared to us.
Thanks to April Noel Amos for sharing…
Sense of Smell and Hearing: Humans vs. Dogs
Dogs have superior senses of smell and hearing compared to humans. In fact, they can hear a wider range of frequencies than us, about 40-60,000 hertz, depending on their breed and age. We can only detect sounds at approximately 20 hertz and ranging up to 12,000-20,000 hertz.
Our canine buddies have more than 18 muscles to move their ears so they can definitely locate a sound more precisely. However, both dogs and humans can lose some ability to hear higher frequencies with old age.
In terms of the sense of smell, dogs are quite superior than us because their brains are actually built to sense smell. Their olfactory cortex, which is 40 times bigger than ours, enables them to have superior smelling capabilities. Dogs utilize their wet noses to determine where a certain smell is coming from. Plus, they can even use each nostril separately.
With us humans, we can only sense up to 4,000 to 10,000 different smells. That’s pretty low compared to around 30,000 to 100,000 smelling abilities of dogs.