I think Cecil’s column on an animal’s ability to smell fear was absolutely correct, but I also think the subject could be looked at a little broader. Once, our dog trainer (okay, he was a dog psychologist; we lived in L.A. at the time) said that dogs can hear much better than we and can hear things like faster breathing and even an accelerated heart beat. Also, he said they can smell an increase in sweat coming from you and, like the canine version of a wine connoisseur, smell if adrenaline was one of the components that caused the sweat. Well, writing this down, it suddenly looks a lot more crystals-and-past-life-regression crackpotish than I had previously thought. Still, we did have a dog with very bad eyesight who would always growl when walking past a schizophrenic street person. Maybe it was the tin foil hats, but these people seemed to give off something that the dog did not sense from the rest of the shopping-cart set.
So, while animals may not be able to smell some actual fear-type ooze from special fear pores, they might be able to sense other things that alert their instincts that this person is not a normal part of their pack.