05/12/2022
I NOSE WHAT TIME IT IS !
Dogs just seem to know when it’s time for food, time for a walk or even what time we’re expected to come home, sometimes down to the exact minute!
Yes, they may know this simply from daily routines that create predictable patterns or certain cues that predict certain events, but there is far more to this ability to tell time than the obvious reasons.
One theory is that time has a particular smell. Different times of the day smell differently. Morning smells differently to afternoon or evening. As air heats up over the course of the day, air currents change and move around, carrying molecules of different odours with it. These changes become predictable and a dog’s incredible sense of smell enables these odours to become their “clock”.
One example is when you leave the house to go to work, leaving a strong scent behind you. As time passes, your scent becomes weaker. Dogs predict that when your scent becomes weakened to a certain level, it’s time for you to come home. The level of your scent predicts what time you come home. As dogs can detect both strong and weak scents and all the levels in between, it means that they are actually interpreting events across an interval of time.
Another way dogs may tell time is through circadian rhythms. Just like us, dogs have fluctuations in systems like hormone levels, neural activity or body temperature and these rhythms may help them to understand the approximate time of day - just like when our stomach starts growling when it’s nearly time for dinner or we feel tired when it's time for bed.
Dogs are not the only species that can interpret time. Animals that migrate or hibernate follow seasonal cues from nature in the form of daylight and temperature to know when it’s the right time.
Having hundreds of millions more scent receptors than us, a dog’s amazing ability to smell is a likely reason that dogs just "nose" what time it is.
