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How does your dog know when you’re stressed? They can smell it.

They know how we feel.

dog scent, dogs smell stress, dog science

Dogs noses are for more than just looking cute and finding the snacks you hid away.

Every dog owner has the sense that their pet knows when they’re feeling big emotions, whether you’re angry and your dog knows to give you space or you’re feeling sad and they nuzzle up next to you on the couch.

However, scientists have never been sure whether pet dogs are picking up on visual or audio cues to get a sense of their owners’ emotions or if they are tuned into something more profound.

A new study published in the scientific journal PLOS One has found that when humans are stressed we have a change in body odor and our dogs take notice and act accordingly.

“The take-home message of this study is that our bodies’ psychological stress response changes the smell of our breath and sweat and that dogs can detect this change,” Clara Wilson, a Ph.D. student in the School of Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast, told Gizmodo.


via Pixabay

To find out if dogs can smell our stress, researchers took sweat and breath samples from 36 human volunteers before and after they were given a tricky math question. The humans were asked to count backward from 9,000 in increments of 17.

Doesn’t the idea just make you sweat?

Four dogs were trained to detect stress smells by learning to differentiate the scents from three different types of gauze, one that was unused, one from someone who was stressed and another from the same person before they were given the stressful math question.

After the guessing sessions, the dogs were 93.5% accurate at differentiating the stress odors from the other scents.

“This study provides further evidence of the extraordinary capabilities of ‘man’s best friend,’” the study’s first author, animal psychologist Wilson, said according to NBC News.

But that doesn’t mean dogs are only using scent to pick up on our emotional states.

via Pixabay

“While it is likely that in a real-life context dogs are picking up on our stress from a variety of context cues, we have shown using a laboratory study that there is a confirmed odor component that is likely contributing to dogs’ ability to sense when we are stressed,” Wilson continued.

This is just another incredible example of how well dogs can smell. For comparision VCA Animal Hospitals says that dogs can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times better than people.

If dogs can smell our stress, I wonder what else they are smelling on us?

The study gives us some insight into the close relationship between humans and dogs. But it may also provide new ways of training service dogs to better care for their human friends. If dogs can learn to quickly smell emotions they may become even better at taking care of humans.

“Knowing that there is a detectable odor component to stress may raise discussion into the value of olfactory-based training (e.g., taking samples from a person when relaxed and experiencing stress) and positively reinforcing the dog to attend or perform attention-seeking behaviors in response to this odor,” Wilson said.

Planet

Easy (and free!) ways to save the ocean

The ocean is the heart of our planet. It needs our help to be healthy.

Ocean Wise

Volunteers at a local shoreline cleanup

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The ocean covers over 71% of the Earth’s surface and serves as our planet’s heart. Ocean currents circulate vital heat, moisture, and nutrients around the globe to influence and regulate our climate, similar to the human circulatory system. Cool, right?

Our ocean systems provide us with everything from fresh oxygen to fresh food. We need it to survive and thrive—and when the ocean struggles to function healthfully, the whole world is affected.

Pollution, overfishing, and climate change are the three biggest challenges preventing the ocean from doing its job, and it needs our help now more than ever. Humans created the problem; now humans are responsible for solving it.

#BeOceanWise is a global rallying cry to do what you can for the ocean, because we need the ocean and the ocean needs us. If you’re wondering how—or if—you can make a difference, the answer is a resounding YES. There are a myriad of ways you can help, even if you don’t live near a body of water. For example, you can focus on reducing the amount of plastic you purchase for yourself or your family.

Another easy way to help clean up our oceans is to be aware of what’s known as the “dirty dozen.” Every year, scientists release an updated list of the most-found litter scattered along shorelines. The biggest culprit? Single-use beverage and food items such as foam cups, straws, bottle caps, and cigarette butts. If you can’t cut single-use plastic out of your life completely, we understand. Just make sure to correctly recycle plastic when you are finished using it. A staggering 3 million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans annually. Imagine the difference we could make if everyone recycled!

The 2022 "Dirty Dozen" ListOcean Wise

If you live near a shoreline, help clean it up! Organize or join an effort to take action and make a positive impact in your community alongside your friends, family, or colleagues. You can also tag @oceanwise on social if you spot a beach that needs some love. The location will be added to Ocean Wise’s system so you can submit data on the litter found during future Shoreline Cleanups. This data helps Ocean Wise work with businesses and governments to stop plastic pollution at its source. In Canada, Ocean Wise data helped inform a federal ban on unnecessary single-use plastics. Small but important actions like these greatly help reduce the litter that ends up in our ocean.

Ocean Wise, a conservation organization on a mission to restore and protect our oceans, is focused on empowering and educating everyone from individuals to governments on how to protect our waters. They are making conservation happen through five big initiatives: monitoring and protecting whales, fighting climate change and restoring biodiversity, innovating for a plastic-free ocean, protecting and restoring fish stocks, and finally, educating and empowering youth. The non-profit believes that in order to rebuild a resilient and vibrant ocean within the next ten years, everyone needs to take action.

Become an Ocean Wise ally and share your knowledge with others. The more people who know how badly the ocean needs our help, the better! Now is a great time to commit to being a part of something bigger and get our oceans healthy again.

It's incredible what a double-sided magnet can do.


A new trend in treasure hunting called magnet fishing has blown up over the past two years, evidenced by an explosion of YouTube channels covering the hobby. Magnet fishing is a pretty simple activity. Hobbyists attach high-powered magnets to strong ropes, drop them into waterways and see what they attract.

The hobby has caught the attention of law enforcement and government agencies because urban waterways are a popular place for criminals to drop weapons and stolen items after committing a crime. In 2019, a magnet fisherman in Michigan pulled up an antique World War I mortar grenade and the bomb squad had to be called out to investigate.


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“This is THE sisters experience…you captured the whole thing."

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But there’s also a beautiful loyalty. Sure, sisters can turn from friends to enemies on a dime, but in those purer moments, you’ll see them stop at nothing to help one another.

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Sometimes we hear a story that makes us collectively confused. Should we be offended? Laugh? Donate to a parents future bail fund for their children? It's really a toss up but the consensus on this mom's eyebrow raising story is that laughter and bail money are both appropriate responses.

Maranda Arbogast, a mom that runs the TikTok page, momma.chaos, shared a hilariously mortifying story of a time she took her three daughters grocery shopping and somehow wound up in a, "one of these things is not like the others" moment. The mom of three leads into the story by explaining that she is raising children that will likely have run ins with the law.

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