Dr. Snoopy to the Rescue

It's very possible. I believe dogs have 5000-1 smell detectors in their noses over humans, or perhaps it is with hearing. Maybe they can actually hear cancer growing, maybe both. Until dogs can talk we will not have any solid information.

Monty Don’s book, Nigel: My Family and Other Dogs, paints a reasonable picture of the world through the eyes of a dog…which is really through the nose of a dog, of course.

Temple Grandon’s Thinking In Pictures also gives you an animal’s-eye view of the world.

We indeed won’t have solid information until dogs can talk, but a sensitive and eloquent dog-owner and an autistic woman who can think like an animal are a pretty good approximation. One or both books are worth a read.

I find this intersects on Darwinian theory as well — if only to expose how it is less a theory and more a collection of ad hoc stories.

If those noses on dogs are so powerful and useful (and they clearly are), why is our sense of smell so dull? Wouldn’t it be useful to evolve a better nose? Wouldn’t it give us a huge advantage in terms of detecting prey or enemies? Why then is the sense of smell so mediocre in humans?

Darwinian theory can has little to give but stories. And I can invent one just like anyone else. It may even sound plausible. It could even be true.

We know one thing about wolves, for instance. They do get out in the weather without clothes. That is, often enough they must surely get doused by the rain and receive inadvertent baths. [Yes…dogs will intentionally roll in stinky stuff just to hide their smell, but perhaps that is another issue.]

But humans have probably worn clothes since the dawn of time. And clothes are wonderful avenues for retaining and multiplying stink, especially if bathing is rare. And even from recent history, we understand that bathing was not usually the thing to do. We can’t speak for prehistoric times, but certainly outside of the Romans and maybe a few others, we can suppose that bathing was not the norm.

In early man it might have been less so. And clothes exacerbate the problem of stink. So let us assume for sake of argument that close social bond were extremely important for the survival of any tribe. But if you physically could not stand the stink of your campfire neighbor, how close could those bonds ever be? Was our sense of smell (perhaps once acute) dumbed-down by natural selection because a mediocre sense of smell made close communities more possible?

One of the aspects you get from a good historical novel is just how dirty and smelly most people were back then. And I assume the “back then” could cover most of history. If we walked into a medieval tavern I think we might be repulsed to the point of gaging. But I do think you can become acclimated to malodors. But perhaps only to a point….and much more easily so with a somewhat desensitized schnoz.

We modern humans sometimes have the opposite problem. I’ve had women come into my office and the stench from their perfume could take hours to dissipate, even with the door open, and even while the perfumer having spent just one minute in my office. I’m not sure how this fits into my ad hoc evolutionary story regarding why humans don’t have noses as sensitive as dogs, but in some regards perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing. And, indeed, maybe the need for close-quarters living made it someone mandatory.

In Durant's "Caesar and Christ" he mentions that the thing that stimulated Roman bathing was the first aqueduct which was built to bring water to Rome. He said that the weekly bath taken by the aristocrats became daily or more.

To my knowledge, the Japanese were about the cleanest people in previous centuries. They took a lot of trouble to heat the fires to warm the water for their tubs so they almost made an art of bathing.



The stench in ancient and Spanish galleys was so powerful that sometimes one would faint when entering the rowing areas. Of course it was not only human sweat that one was smelling. Those chained to their oars were not giving bathroom breaks to relieve themselves.

It was common for officers and others to carry small perfume bottles or soaked handkerchiefs which they held to their noses to block out the stench.

Kudos to the Japanese and ancient Romans for their bathing habits. There are legions of people (no pun intended) today in quite rich countries (such as America) who are basically pigs in the way they live...and that might be an unkind comparison to the pigs.

I once interviewed for a job in the Rubbertown area. (There's also the Butchertown area, which also would be noted for its distinguishing smell for those who can detect such things.) I figured I was well suited to it, since the smell wouldn't be a problem. They didn't hire me.