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+--- Thread: Can animals really smell fear in humans? (/Thread-Can-animals-really-smell-fear-in-humans)
Can animals really smell fear in humans? - Maxmars - 02-25-2024
Well..., there seems to be scientific research that confirms it:
From Livescience and pretty good explanation of the way that happens...
So what does the research say? Can animals actually smell fear? To get to the root of this question, researchers have largely taken human presence out of the equation, as animals such as dogs are known to respond to our expressions and body posture. Instead, investigators have focused on how animals, including horses and dogs, respond to various smells emitted by humans watching happy versus fear-inducing videos.
I suppose it is very pertinent, with animals like dogs, which are so tuned-into human behavior, they'd have to devise a way that eliminates the dog pick up a person's posture, and expressions. But I was surprised about horses though despite many of my friends who insist that they too are very sensitive to human mood.
The method used was researchers had participants watch clips from a comedy one day and a horror movie the next. They then collected sweat samples from the viewers' armpits using cotton pads.
"At first we weren't sure if the horses could differentiate between the odors," lead study author Plotine Jardat, a doctoral student at the University of Tours in France, told Live Science.
But the horses reacted differently depending on which cotton pad they were presented with. When the horses smelled the joy samples, they used only their left nostrils," Jardat said. "That indicates which part of the brain they are using to analyze the odor. In all mammals, the two brain hemispheres have different functions, and in an emotional context, it seems like the odor from the joy samples were perceived as positive by the horses."
But when the horses were given the samples swiped during the horror film, the animals reacted much differently and not only sniffed the sample longer but also "used both nostrils" to catch a whiff, Jardat said.
Researchers propose that chemosignals could be behind the horses' reactions. There are several compounds in sweat, such as adrenaline or androstadienone (a pheromone-like protein) that could be causing a shift in odor during moments of fear.
These compounds could also be carrying "emotional information" from one species to the other, the researchers reported.
Meanwhile, in a 2018 study in the journal Animal Cognition, scientists tasked Labrador retrievers to sniff samples swiped from male participants' underarms after watching either a scary or happy video clip. The researchers placed the sample inside a box with an opening and placed the box inside a closed room with two people: a stranger and the dog's owner.
..."When the dogs smelled the odor of a happy person, they increased their interactions with the stranger in the room," study lead author Biagio D'Aniello, a professor of zoology at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, told Live Science.
"But when they sniffed a sample from someone who was fearful, the dogs had a completely different reaction."
"When they smelled fear, they would either go to their owner or they would go to the door and try to leave the room,"
It seems clear to me that it is very probable that animals not only sense emotion responses, but at least some of them develop a set reaction to it.
Thanks for reading!
