Animals smelling fear

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

In this article, Cecil says that humans probably don’t give off any scent that tells an animal that the person is afraid.

But animals DO sense a persons level of fear. As a kid, I worked in a kennel and SPCA- facility. And I’ve seen first-hand how a charged up dog that won’t let anyone near its cage can be subdued by a person who doesn’t show fear toward that dog. I’m not sure what it is, but if it ISN’T smell, perhaps it is a bio-electro-emission (I just made that up) of some sort that permits an Animal to read the state of the person approaching.

As an example of what i am referring to, I believe it to be similar to a human being having the feeling they are being watched, or more specifically, feeling that someone else is in the same room or close enough by for the person to sense another’s presence. I know I have felt another persons presence in the same room as me, and I am pretty sure it wasn’t an odor that alerted me. Perhaps subconsciously we sense another by changes in temperature, or sensing a pulse or heartbeat… Whatever it is, I believe it’s real and that most of us have felt this from time to time in our lives.

As a personal example, we used to get K-9s to board if their owner was shot or injured, since many of these animals are attached only to that one officer. There was one German Shepard in particular that I remember, that no one could get near, however for some reason it didn’t scare me… so I was able to get into his cage with him and feed him without any fear that the animal was a danger to me. No one else had that ability. I have no idea why this was, except to say that my fear didn’t exist for this dog.

On the other hand, I remember a pit bull that I was afraid of, and the dog knew it. Even if I tried to give the dog a “poker face” of not showing fear, it still came after me like I was lunch. If the cage door wasn’t there, I would have most definitely been attacked. Another person, however, was able to do the same thing with this pit bull that I was able to do with the German Shepherd.

So, whatever it is, there is definitely a sense animals seem aware of from one person to the next. At least that’s my belief based on experience. I am not a dog whisperer, either.

2

I think dogs react to body language as much as anything. All animals, really. Do not show fear around horses.

3

Yeah, and half the time we’re right, and the other half we’re wrong. Humans can’t sense the presence of another human nor can we know when someone is looking at us. It’s all hogwash.

4

I don’t know if it is a smell, telepathy, or bio-electric lah lah, but I have seen dogs and horses figure out whether a person is competent and trustworthy in, quite literally, a few seconds. I’ve seen this many times over. It is so common that it’s almost a joke in animal training circles. They also determine whether someone is incompetent and unsure just as fast. Sometimes I can read what they are reading and sometimes I can’t. They are better at it than we are, that’s for sure.

Personally I think it is body language on a micro level. Horses for example, don’t need to be looking at you, they can feel it just as soon as you swing into the saddle.

5

It’s only anecdotal, I suppose, but there’s always the famous ability of cats to pick out the ailurophobe in the room, jump in his or her lap, and grin as if to say, “You can’t get rid of me without making a scene, ha-ha!”

6

It recently has been demonstrated in double-blind tests that human “flop sweat” (associated with fear, pain and acute distress) does smell different than regular sweat. And yes, it is possible for other people to smell it on you at least some of the time. Check it out. Pretty gross.

7

It has also long been known and reliably demonstrated that dogs can predict epileptic seizures in humans before they happen. It is still not fully understood how but the theory is some olfactory cue, possibly in our blood chemistry or changes to the smell of our breath before the seizure takes place.

Likewise, service dogs are trained to detect low blood sugar in diabetics and do so routinely, and more recently dogs have successfully been trained to sniff out bladder and lung cancer in humans with amazing accuracy.

With fear comes adrenaline, and presumably other changes to our blood chemistry, breath, and as noted above, sweat. Given their proven success at smelling other minute chemical changes in humans it’s a pretty small leap to assume that they can smell fear.

8

Again, anecdotal: I raised a Great Dane in a co-ed fraternity, back in the late 70’s. The young women in the house liked to take the dog when walking at night, feeling safer. Several of them independently reported that when they felt threatened by a stranger (following or approaching), the dog would react by being hyper-alert and pressing his body against their thigh or hip.

He never did that when walking with me, but I never felt threatened. If it happened to any of the other guys, they didn’t mention it.

9

Smell might be part of it, reading body language is definitely part of it as well. Dogs are extremely good at reading body language, and humans aren’t that good at hiding their body language (a poker face may well not work on a dog) :slight_smile: Various research shows that dogs read human emotions, and other research demonstrates that humans can read dog emotions. The more this topic is studied, the more evidence of human/canine empathy is found.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-decoded.html‎ Nova had a good documentary about some of it :slight_smile: