Watch Out Bloodhounds: Humans Can Track by Scent Too!

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Experimenters at Berkeley have discovered that humans can track by smell, similar to the way dogs can. With evolution, our sense of smell has become a less prominent part of our sensory survival arsenal and it was thought that although we could detect smells, we were not able to follow a scent trail to its source. Now, scientists have found that is not the case.

In the experiment, they dribbled chocolate essential oil in a field, leading to actual chocolate at the end. Volunteers were put into a suit that deprived them of all senses other than smell (blindfold for the eyes, ears covered and hands and feet covered to blunt the sense of touch). Then they were asked to find the chocolate.

Like dogs, they got on all fours and started sniffing the ground to identify the smell and follow it. They were observed to use the same methodology as dogs, which is sniffing from side to side. They were able to detect which nostril the scent was strongest on and continually criss-crossing the scent trail, making corrections based on which side the scent was strongest.

Of course, it is also true that humans can detect a much lower concentration of the scent molecules compared to a dog, but it still has interesting implications for scent marketing. What if, instead of or in addition to ambient scent, a store used a scent trail to lead to its higher margin products?