I mean, my cat can clean itself, but do dogs do that much grooming? If I rinsed myself for 5 minutes every day, would I avoid the smell?
Are you saying that animals don’t stink? What is your definition of stink? If I stick my face in my dogs fur, I can smell stink, even though he just had a good bath this last friday. My cat’s fur smells like he rolls in his turd box. He can’t lick that off.
Have you ever smelled a horse up close? I have. Stink!
How about a cow? I’ve smelled cows up close: STINK!
Sheep, goats, bears? Stink, stink, stink!
I actually believe that animals stink worse than humans.
Up close that is.
And that’s you answer.
Humans don’t have thick fur covering their bodies to trap in sweat and other odor causing things, preventing the smells from radiating like animals do. Which is why if you don’t bath for a few days I can smell you 6 feet away, but I have to be right up to my dogs fur to smell his stink.
Fur. that’s the answer! I think.
A combination of factors probably:
Most animals we select to domesticate or have around were probably chosen with regard to scent. (reason why Zen101 will never own a ferret) Stinky animals are less likely to be around the home so much.
Then there is dietary variety. Human eat a lot of weird stuff and unnatural things too like chemichals and we smoke and drink coffee (well some folks do). Hence out waste and our BO can get a lot of variety and so it’s hard to get “used” to one particular smell.
The most common two domestic mammals (cats and dogs) don’t sweat and have been bred to be good companions. Some dogs do have a very active anal gland, which if you have ever been in the presence of you would know they smell horrible.
Also animals tend to have more accuse sense of smell, so the biological need for strong odor production isn’t there.
Still there are some damned stinky animals out there. Just keep an eye out for a Discovery channel program about the ten smelliest animals.
btw: Never get stuck behind a semi truck hauling pigs. Pigshit isn’t a pleasant earthy aroma like horse or cow manure.
-
-
- Humans don’t smell any more than other animals: it’s just that you being a human, you are genetically programmed to notice them more. -Much like how an animal marking its territory with urine will flat-out ignore the urine of other different species. - DougC
-
I saw a show on The Discovery Channel. Nigel’s Wild World of Animals or something like that. The show was a countdown of the 10 smelliest animals. I don’t think humans even made the list. I don’t remember which was the smelliest. Could’ve been the wolverine.
I’ll have to disagree with zen101 about animals not needing to stink because of their superior sense of smell. IIRC, stinking was a way for the animal to mark its territory and is an important survival/reproductive thing.
(IANA biologist.)
Animals don’t stink? Have you ever been anywhere in the vicinity of a tiger or a lion? man, that is some major stench! The only reason you may notice people is that you are around people and not pigs.
Nothing to add except Pkbites answer was funny as hell.
Carry on
If you want to understand just how bad animals smell, go to a zoo. Most large mammals are grotesquely rank. Antelope, elephants, hippos, lions, tigers, bears (oh my) orang-utangs - they smell awful. Humans are in the minor leagues of stench, believe me.
I’m not sure zoos are an accurate depiction of animal stink. If I kept you in a cage and regulated your environment, you might start to be pretty offensive.
zen101, well maintained ferrets stink no more than cats or dogs.
Nobody has mentioned skunks yet. In my experience, they win the “stinkiest animal” award hands down.
First off, BO is caused by bacteria living on your skin. Sweat is mostly odorless. Some foods can cause sweat to smell such as a lot of garlic but then you’ll simply smell like garlic (which I personally find nice coming from a kitchen but revolting when exuded off a person…maybe I’m just weird like that). The bacteria living on your skin eats your sweat and it is the bacteria poop (or waste product if you will) that reeks. Washing gets rid of a lot of the little buggers but they grow back fairly quickly and you smell again. Anti-perspirant works by blocking the sweat glands so you don’t sweat or don’t sweat as much giving the bacteria less to eat so they don’t reproduce as fast and have less waste product ot excrete. What little does occur is then usually covered up by deodorant which generally just masks the bad smell under a perfume.
Dogs and cats don’t swear like humans do so they don’t give this bacteria much to do so they don’t smell. What dogs and cats do smell from is typically from things they pick up in the environment. Without a bath these various smells start adding up and kitty or doggy becomes stinky. See how fast a mostly outdoor dog or cat begins to smell versus an indoor only animal. Big difference.
Large animals that do sweat like humans (such as horses) can reek without proper grooming.
I disagree. Our 9 month old Pug is always saying nasty words.
Just for thought: I spent 30 days camping and hiking and climbing in the outdoors one summer. This meant NO SHOWERS for a month. Seriously. And believe it or not, I was amazed at how little me and my buddies smelled. I mean, I thought we would just REEK by the end of our trip, but we didn’t. I really think part of the reason for this is the kind of food we were eating, the fact that none of us were using any “beauty products” (no deoderant, perfume, make-up, soap, etc.). So personally, I agree with pkbites that plenty of other animals smell much worse than humans, even after a month of not showering.
[sdmb introduction] hi, im mixie. ive been lurking for a year or two, and until now have been too lazy to register, but highly amused. [/sdmb intro]
i would agree that their musk is pretty stinky, but a pet skunk without his musk glands has very little actual body odor. theyre less stinky than dogs and FAR less smelly than a ferret.
peace,
~mixie
I wonder if this is just you and your buddies getting used to the smell. What kind of reaction would you get if you stepped in your local McDonalds right after your trip?
People in the middle ages didn’t bathe frequently, but they still managed to live together in big cities; If you were to go to Paris, 1437 A.D., you’ll probably have a couple of difficult and smelly weeks to adapt, but afterwards it will be just ok.
So, a possible answer to the OP will be that we are just not used to be around smelly people, and therefore the BO seems particularly strong.
How does one maintain a ferret well? I have and do visit pet stored often and have had freinds with ferrets, all of them de-scented and they still have a musty smell to them that reminds me of bed-wetters bedroom.
Meanwhile aside from breath and farting (and the obvious litterbox) cats have no odor unless they spray.
Ferrets are cute, no doubt. But they smell. Every ferret owner and enthusiast in the world deny’s this for some reason. Just admit you are either used to the unique aroma or that you enjoy the animal despite it.
Johnny L.A.
I mentioned the Discovery channel program as well. And it may have been a Nigel show. I was mainly referring to animals that don’t seem to have a smell to us humans. Everything has some kind of smell, but for some animals it isn’t as pronounced.
Certainly strong smell is important for the musk ox who needs to both identify and be identified from a great distance in a windy climate.
But other animals don’t have the need to identify from such a great distance and so their smells are too subtle for us to pick up.
Here’s an interesting experiment where a hobbyist managed to kill his Underarm Body Odor bacteria. The key was to sterilize shirts and towels, otherwise “The Stench” returned very quickly.
I tried what he suggested. It didn’t work (the foot cream didn’t stop my own Stench.) But I tried Michem deodorant, which is famous for eliminating stink for two days. It worked! I was stench-free for about five days, while normally I reek after about a day and a half if I only take showers but don’t use deodorant.
I suspect that Michem deodorant kills BO bacteria. After the first day it certainly doesn’t keep you from sweating, yet the Stench doesn’t return. Then the trick is to avoid re-infection. Normal washing won’t make your clothes odor free (just whiff your t-shirt underarms after they’re washed. Or try leaving the wet laundry in the machine for a couple of days and you’ll find out how much nasty stuff survived the soap and water.) Your underarms get re-infected with Stench bacteria which was stored in your clothing.
One other thing I discovered: if you use Chlorox to sterilize your laundry, then your washcloths have no odor at all. That was weird. Washcloths and dishrags ALWAYS have that special washcloth stink even when fresh from the dryer. Also, if you used Chlorox, then if you forget a laundry load and leave it in the machine for many days, it remains totally odor-free. However, if you don’t use enough Chlorox, you won’t kill every last bacterial spore, and then the “forgotten laundry test” will create some VERY reeky wet clothes.
In my own washer, about 1/4 cup of liquid Chlorox bleach per load seems to be the minimum needed. You have to mix it well with water, and I wouldn’t be suprised if it slowly kills the bright colors after many washings. However, once you’ve killed the bacteria in ALL your clothing and under your arms, you probably don’t need the Chlorox anymore unless you get “reinfected” from body contact with other people (or from their contaminated towels!)
That’s not because you didn’t smell, it’s just because you got used to it.
I used to work on an intensive piggery - many thousands of pigs in an area of only a few acres. That place stunk. People complained about the smell 10 miles away but every day while I was there I could barely notice the smell. In fact, I could smell other, much less pungent aromas that should have been drowned out by the stink of pigs and pigshit. For instance, I could smell the coffee brewing in the lunch room while I was working in the sow shed 10 yards away and surrounded by 3000 pigs.