Why do dogs like to roll in stinky things?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’ve ever taken a dog on a walk, or let them run around the woods, you know that they LOVE to roll around in stinky stuff! And it’s one heck of a mess to clean up. Why do they do that? We asked researcher Elizabeth Carranza from the Arizona Canine Cognition Center to help us find the answer.

Got a question that’s rolling around in your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help sniff out the answer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Braids Behind Braids on, this is the Moment of Um.
0:05.0	Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Cecey the Dog. Liff?
0:14.0	Um...
0:16.0	Let me paint you a picture.
0:19.0	It's Tuesday. It's 82 degrees outside.
0:21.8	The backyard is just begging for me to run around in it in circles.
0:26.5	My human opens up the sliding door into the backyard, and I run free.
0:36.5	I've got a pile of leaves on my left, an abandoned fire pit to pee there, a big hunk and squirrel right above my head.
0:43.7	Hey, Jerry.
0:45.3	The stick I carried around for two hours straight yesterday, high stick, and...
0:51.3	What's that?
0:53.0	Is that?
0:57.2	Juice dripping out of the garbage can?
0:59.7	Stinky old juice?
1:03.0	Oh, it smells awful.
1:05.0	I love it.
1:09.1	I think I can wedge my body right next to this garbage bin and just... Oh, yeah, baby. That muck is totally covering my formerly clean fur.
1:14.6	I smell like straight up garbage.
1:17.6	This is the best day of my life.
1:20.6	My buddy Luke wanted to know why us dogs love rolling around and stinky stuff,
1:25.6	so I found a human who knows a lot about it.
1:28.9	Check this out.
	...

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