You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

In today's episode, we're going to talk a lot about attention and about noticing.

But despite the fact that this is a show for humans, on today's episode, we're going to be

getting our advice from dogs. Today's guest, Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, is a world-renowned scientist who studies

canine cognition. That is to say, her job is to figure out what dogs think and know and feel,

and she is going to help us figure out how to pay attention to the world, like a dog. To get us

started, here's a clip from a video Alexandra made about her research with Ted Ed.

And this clip is narrated by Pen Pen Chen.

If you can smell a sprits of perfume in a small room,

a dog would have no trouble smelling it in an enclosed stadium and distinguishing its ingredients to boot.

And everything in the street, every passing person or car,

any contents of the neighbor's trash,

each type of tree, and all the birds and insects in it,

has a distinct odor profile telling your dog what it is,

where it is, and which direction it's moving in.

Besides being much more powerful than ours,

a dog's sense of smell can pick up things that can't even be seen at all.

A whole separate olfactory system called the vomoral nasal organ, above the roof of the mouth,

detects the hormones all animals, including humans, naturally release. It lets dogs identify

potential mates or distinguish between friendly and hostile animals.

It alerts them to our various emotional states,

and it can even tell them when someone is pregnant or sick.

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