# Can animals smell or taste water?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-animals-smell-or-taste-water/616584>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 23, 2012, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-animals-smell-or-taste-water/616584 "2012-03-23T06:03:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-animals-smell-or-taste-water/616584/1 "2012-03-23T06:03:47Z")

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I guess most animals have enough access to water that they don’t have a need. But I can imagine desert animals being evolutionarily predisposed to developing a sensory sensitivity to water sources. Has such a thing been documented?

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**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-animals-smell-or-taste-water/616584/2 "2012-03-23T06:55:49Z")

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This has actually mean the subject of several studies.

The short answer is that no, animals can not smell water. However many species can smell wet soil from amazing distances. Animals such as wildebeest and kangaroos have been reliably documents to be able to smell wet soil from a distance of nearly 100km, a fact supported by laboratory studies. Even domestic cattle will move towards storms over 40km away, which was a real problem in the days before barbed wire fences. Even the wet soil around waterholes can be smelled, and IIRC dogs can detect wet soil in patches of just a few feet across from a distance of several miles and grazing animals aren’t far behind.

So although animals can’t smell water, it’s a purely technical quibble since, in the real world, water=wet ground and they can smell wet ground just fine.

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**Author:** ![Punoqllads](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Punoqllads](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punoqllads)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2012, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-animals-smell-or-taste-water/616584/3 "2012-03-23T07:18:04Z")

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Humans, too, in concentrations as low as 10 parts per trillion, according to [this](http://www.bios.niu.edu/meganathan/smell_of_soil.shtml) article.