Dog Behavior: Why Dogs Sniff Each Other
Is Sniffing Other Dogs the Canine Equivalent of a Handshake?
Originally published in slightly different form on July 13, 2009 at PsychologyToday.com
It’s said that dogs sniff each other as a kind of canine equivalent to the human handshake; a “greeting ceremony” which reportedly started in medieval times as a way of checking the other guy for weapons. Our canine companions are said to do this for similar reasons; it signifies that both animals are willing to start out on friendly terms. But is it really just a social gesture? Is there another explanation for why dogs sniff each other’s hineys?
At least 33% of a dog’s brain is devoted to processing olfactory information while in humans that figure is closer to about 5%. Evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff says that “[a dog’s nose] can distinguish T-shirts worn by identical twins, follow odor trails, and are 10,000 times more sensitive than humans to certain odors.”
“Odors are powerful stimulants,” Bekoff continues. “Although my late companion dog, Jethro (aka Hoover), enjoyed visiting his veterinarian, he showed fear if he went into an examination room where the previous canine client was afraid.”
Steven R. Lindsay writes, “Olfactory information is highly durable in dogs. They exhibit evidence of recognizing the scent of the mother and the breeder after years of separation, social memories that may persist throughout a dog’s life.” (Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training: Adaptation and Learning, 2000, p. 228.)
So if a dog’s nose can pick up information from yellow snow, from the fear that hangs in the air after another dog leaves an examination room, from scents left behind by the shoes of an escaped prisoner, or from lifting its nostrils to the wind, why would a dog need to stick his nose directly into another dog’s snout, genitals, and nether regions to garner social information? Couldn’t he do that at a “safer” distance? And if the memories sparked by familiar scents are so durable, why would dogs need to continue sniffing each other every time they meet?
Dog trainer and natural philosopher Kevin Behan has a unique way of looking at canine behavior. Most of us tend to view such phenomena from the top down or from the outside in. As a result we overcomplicate things. Behan does just the opposite. He sees things from the inside out, and in so doing he’s developed a very simple theory of “behavior as energy,” sort of the E = MC2 of animal consciousness if you will, except it would probably be written as C = ME2, where C is consciousness, M is momentum, and E is emotional energy.
In the “Why Dogs Do What They Do“ section of his website, Behan makes an apt observation, “When people meet and greet, they shake hands or touch in some way, and they exchange pleasantries. And when dogs meet and greet, they smell each other. However people don’t reintroduce themselves periodically throughout their interaction or every time they meet especially if they know each other well, whereas dogs smell each other each and every time they meet, no matter how well they may ‘know’ each other.”
Like a lot of Kevin’s observations this one comes as both a bit of a surprise and a “Huh, I hadn’t thought about it but that’s true...” realization.
I had three dogs staying with me this weekend. Two of them, Dougie and Muskoka, see each other at least twice a week. They spend a lot of time together, they’ve known each other for years, they’re best buds, they don’t need to “shake hands” every time they run into one another. Yet on Saturday, as soon as Dougie’s owners dropped him off, the first thing he and Muskoka did, right there on my front stoop, was sniff each other.
Why do dogs need to do this?
Behan says it’s a way of grounding themselves. “Anytime there is ... any change, any stimulus or stimulation, and especially when stressed, dogs need to smell something.”
That’s a simple and yet very intriguing observation. And you can see it for yourself in the way a dog who’s momentarily frightened when a book falls to the floor, for example, will first react to the noise and then cautiously, and somewhat mysteriously, go over to sniff the offending object. I’ve also seen a dog notice that another dog is whimpering in his sleep. And she’ll come over, and, while the other dog is still dreaming, very gingerly sniff his snout.
Behan: “[Any] change in the dog’s sensory perception of a situation generates nervous activity in its brain, and this of course is neuro-chemical electrical energy. My proposal is that this electrochemical energy acts just like electricity in that it wants ‘to run to ground.’”
“Smelling is that primal,” says Behan. “It allows the dog to connect with its ‘self’ and quite literally feel the ground beneath its feet.”
It’s primal in humans too. What happens when you stop and smell the roses? It makes you feel good; you can feel your chest expand. What happens when a tantalizing smell comes wafting toward you from a pizza joint? You feel it in your gut. What happens when you find the scent of your lover’s perfume on a scarf she’s left behind? You experience a rush of desire. Whenever we smell something pleasant we’re instantly taken “outside of ourselves;” we leave behind all the thoughts that were buzzing around in our brains, and we experience, if just for a fleeting moment, what it’s like just to be in a body.
Humans have an innate tendency to anthropomorphize animals, i.e., “when dogs sniff each other it’s the canine equivalent of shaking hands.” But I think that in order to truly understand dog behavior we sometimes need to dogthropomorphize ourselves instead.
I don't think dogs “categorize” things the way we do. For instance, while we might say that Dougie and Muskoka are friends, and they’re certainly friendly toward one another, they don’t put things into conceptual chunks, store them in a mental library, and retrieve them for future reference. In other words, they don’t think of themselves as friends, they just feel it. We, on the other hand, sometimes think too much. That’s why it’s so pleasant to escape our thoughts for a moment or two when we “stop and smell the roses.”
So maybe Kevin Behan’s explanation is correct. After all, when we shake hands with strangers we can categorize them afterward and put them into our mental library. So we won’t necessarily need to shake their hands again. And yet the first time we do engage in that ancient social ritual, it’s entirely possible that on the most basic level we’re doing what dogs do when they sniff each other’s butts. We’re simply grounding our energy.
LCK
“Life Is an Adventure--Where Will Your Dog Take You?”
