Everyone’s heard that you should try to not be afraid when confronting a dangerous animal, because it can “sense” your fear. So my question is, can animals, or even humans, sense fear? Is it through some faint odor that adrenaline gives off? Although I did little research, I found one website, but it talked about comparing the sense to psychic ability.
Can you sense when a dog is afraid?
No, that was kinda stupid of me. Can JUST certain animals sense fear?
Given how accurate a dog or cat’s senses of smell and hearing are I’d be surprised if they couldn’t sense fear. You sweat more when you are fearful ,which is the basis of polygraph tests, and animals would be able to smell this even if it did smell just like normal sweat. I’s also known that various pheromones are released in sweat, so I susupect animals can literally smell fear.
Added to this ability they have the potential ability to hear your heart beating in your chest, although I don’t know if it’s ever been established that they do.
Then of course your voice changes in both tone and pitch under stress, and I have no doubt that animals could pick this up very easily, even trained humans can do that.
In short I’d be surprised if animals couldn’t detect fear, but I have no evidence that they do.
My point was that animals can likely sense fear the same way we can - body language, expression, subtle subconcious sounds, and maybe a slight smell. Chemistry does happen when you are afraid, after all.
You know a dog is afraid by how it moves - lower to the ground, ears down, eyes opened wider, jerky motion, whimpering sounds, tail pulled tight. In short, it is tense and alert.
When you are afraid, you probably hunch over a little bit, move with more jerks, have your eyes peeled open, walk differently, stronger breathing, etc.
A critter with the genetics of a hunter (WAG, but this is pure logic) can probably tell by your behavior whether you are scared or not - like a tiger hunting knows it has to stop and hide or strike when its soon-to-be dinner’s head pops up with perked ears and it tenses to run.
The Master speaks: Can animals smell fear?
“>>>My point was that animals can likely sense fear the same way we can - body language, expression, subtle subconcious sounds…”
Yeah, but most animals are far more focussed on smells and sounds than sight and as such smell and sound will be more important.
Cecil agreed with me. Does that count as a cite? 
The problem with smell and sound is that they don’t travel very far very fast (especially smell) when compared to sight, and as Cecil pointed out, evolution is hardly something that favors you walking around reeking of fear. Such a smell would be fairly localized, which doesn’t do a predator stalking prey 100 feet away much good, especially considering the thousands of other ambient smells and sounds.
Secondly, “most animals” is going pretty far without a cite, and “more focused on smells and sounds” is pretty vague. Are you suggesting that a blind cat would be as effective a hunter - even on an open plain with no obstacles - as a normal cat? And that it would be able to stalk its prey?
Anyway, I fall back on Cecil, since it is easy.
">>>The problem with smell and sound is that they don’t travel very far very fast "
Sound travels at the speed of sound, which for hunting purposes is as instantaneous as light.
Difusion of odours occurs at about the same speeds as sound.
“>>>Such a smell would be fairly localized”
Why? Odours diffuse at fantastically high speeds, and dogs and cats are capable of detecting chemicals in the range of PPB in air. I imagaine this would give a range of a good few hundred yards. Not what I would all localised.
“>>>>which doesn’t do a predator stalking prey 100 feet away much good”
Who mentioned hunting? Given that fights between animals are likely to be initiated within a few yards I imagine that an ability to detect fear wpuld be crucial in both avoiding and initiating fights.
“>>>Are you suggesting that a blind cat would be as effective a hunter - even on an open plain with no obstacles - as a normal cat?”
Why would you believe such a thing? Humans are focussed on sight. Do you believe that a deaf human would be as good at hunting as a human with full hearing?
Nope. Diffusion in air is fairly slow, somewhere around inches per minute. I’ve watched nitrogen diffuse through argon in a flask at 1 atmosphere. The speed of the visible boundary was as slow as the speed of the minute hand on a clock!
Maybe you’re thinking of the thermal velocity of individual molecules. Their speed is fast, but their trajectory is a random walk. A cloud of scent essentially STAINS the air, and it takes quite a long time for the “wave of stain” to migrate any distance. Convective mixing is much faster, so stay downwind of the animal in question.
:rolleyes:
You are clearly beyond the realm of reason.
Applying the properties of a sound wave to SMELL? In intensity AND speed?
Sure, believe whatever the hell you want. Cecil worded it aptly enough, and I consider it closed. If you would like to provice a cite, or make some sense, I’m sure someone else would be happy to take it up with you… probably not Cecil, since he already spoke on the subject and said you are wrong, but maybe someone.
Mods, can we tag this previously answered by Cecil and move on?
I think you’ll want to be careful about quoting other posters accurately. The mods don’t look too kindly on what you did.
I don’t have any scientific explanation or facts on this subject, but from observing my last dogs behavior I definately think they know when a person is intimidated or not. A few years ago I had a Rottweiler who was very untrusting of people (because of the previous owner that I “rescued” him from). He would growl and just try to be a badass w/ anyone whom he didn’t know (or didn’t wrestle around with him). I noticed that if the person didn’t show any fear of him and just walked right up to him and petted him he would just give up the toughness and turn into a 120 lb. baby. On the other hand, if the person tried to get away from him and was scared of him, he would keep up his intimidation game (actually running from this dog was the worst mistake). I think it has more to do with the primal instinct of domination, than senses. He was just unsure of where him and that person were in the pack order, so he was making sure he came out on top. I’ve observed this same thing in my female dog, too. It’s more like the bully in the schoolyard in sixth grade, the more you ran the worse beating/picking you got, if you stood up to him you usually became his buddy or at least he respected you.
You Zagdaka are a fool. Nuff said.