Ep. 921: Scent, Smell, and Science: Olfaction in Humans, Deer, and Dogs

Steven Rinella and Janis Putelis speak with olfactory specialist Dr. Lucia Jacobs on: types of smell; scent control; human, deer, fish, and dog olfaction; gray squirrels; and more. Presented by Can-Am, the leader in ATVs, SxS, and Utility Vehicles www.can-am.brp.com http://www.can-am.brp.com Find more of Lucia's work at https://jacobs.berkeley.edu Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 2:19Steven Rinella?

  All right, everybody, you're gonna learn everything you ever want to learn about, about.

• 2:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, what's, shoot, I can't even say the word. Olfaction?

• 2:29Speaker 07

  Olfaction.

• 2:30Steven Rinella?

  Like, how do animals smell? What do they smell? Do humans really suck at smelling? What does a hound dog smell when it smells something? When you, when a deer catches your wind, what's happening? Is there any way to have a deer not catch your wind? How good are they? How bad are we? You're gonna learn everything you ever want to know about, about human and animal ability to smell. Yanis Petelos is here as well, and he's gonna ask a lot of very pragmatic, practical questions about how good are hound dogs, really? And what, what conditions make them, you know? I know. When do they do their job and not do their job? And who's gonna teach us all this is Dr. Lucia F. Jacobs.

• 3:12Steven Rinella?

  She's an evolutionary biologist, neuroscientist, and professor emerita.

• 3:20Steven Rinella?

  Retired, but in good standing.

• 3:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 3:23Steven Rinella?

  Professor emerita of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley, where she directed the Jacobs Lab of Cognitive Biology. Her research explores how animals use scent to map environments, navigate complex terrain, and solve spatial problems. A world-renowned expert on animal cognition, Dr. Jacobs has studied squirrel behavior extensively. Her P, I'm gonna point this out, this isn't in your written bio. You've studied the eastern gray squirrel, an animal of great importance to us.

• 4:01Speaker 07

  Since 1981.

• 4:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the east, the wily eastern gray squirrel. She's writing her forthcoming, forthcoming book on squirrel cognition, examining the surprising intelligence, intelligence behind how rodents store, recall, and protect thousands of hidden food caches.

• 4:26Steven Rinella?

  To get us started, well, welcome to the show. To get us started, let me tell you a

• 4:35Steven Rinella?

  a thing that I have always thought, and then I, I came across your work. I got two balls in the air now. I came across your work in a book called Super Navigators. And it's a book about how animals navigate. And there was a bit about olfaction, and I found your name, and that's how I found you.

• 4:56Steven Rinella?

  A thing I've always thought, and I tell this to my kids. I tell them, like, humans, we humans suck at smelling. We can't smell anything. But now a bear, now there's a guy that can smell, right? It, like, do we suck at smelling? I mean, are we experiencing a world that we can't even understand what an animal's experiencing when it walks outside and takes a whiff of the air? Or are we not that bad at it?

• 5:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, so, I mean, there's, there's two kinds of olfaction. And there's orthonasal, where you're sniffing in and you're using that. You're like, what's out there in the world?

• 5:35Steven Rinella?

  Like, that's when I go.

• 5:37Speaker 07

  Right, right. And then there's retro nasal, which is not, which is asking, what's in my mouth? And to do, and to, and when to kind of sniff what's in your mouth, you breathe out. So you're sending air over the stuff in your mouth, out through your nose. The nose doesn't really care. The nose.

• 5:54Steven Rinella?

  I have to ask, the what's in the mouth, that is just scent molecules that have accumulated in your mouth?

• 6:01Speaker 07

  So if, I'm not a wine connoisseur, but if you are, you know, they put wine in their mouth, and then they breathe, they take a little bit, and then they're breathing out. So what they're doing.

• 6:11Steven Rinella?

  So pretentious, though.

• 6:15Steven Rinella?

  Go ahead.

• 6:16Speaker 07

  But anyway, but that's what, that's what, I mean, there's, there are neuroscientists who, Gordon Shepherd's written some great stuff about this, but, um, yeah, and so then it's.

• 6:24Steven Rinella?

  But it doesn't have to be a physical thing, right? I'm just. You don't have any idea you're doing it, right? Okay, so you have to be like eating something.

• 6:32Speaker 07

  Well, if you're, if you, if, you know, you eat something, you've only got like five taste receptors, you know, sweet, sour, you know, salt. But you've got hundreds of olfactory receptors. So you, if you put food in your mouth, what is it? You're gonna breathe out, and, and it's gonna go past your, you know, your receptors in your nose. And you're gonna get all that information. I mean, sure, you could also sniff a plate of food and, and get a lot of information. That would be orthonasal. But then, once it's in your mouth, you breathe out, and then you're getting retro nasal.

• 7:11Speaker 07

  So humans are really specialized on flavor, which is, you know, both taste and, and odor. And we've, for hundreds of thousands of years, we've been specialized on

• 7:28Speaker 07

  processing food, cooking food, all that. And so, and so we've got, yeah, we're, we're special in that sense, but at the.

• 7:37Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sorry, go ahead.

• 7:38Speaker 07

  No, but at the same time, we are, we're not, we're not clueless about the other. I mean, about where we are in, in space. And I would say mostly, it's because people assume we can't do it, so there aren't any studies of it. And it wasn't till I really started beating the drum that olfaction is being used by

• 8:01Speaker 07

  across the animal kingdom to orient space a lot, like importantly, that I start, actually, we did a study of humans, where we had people in a big room, and we had two, like, literally Q-tips of odors that were hidden with all these decoys. So they didn't know what it was, and we had them, you know, they were blindfolded. We had, you know, earplugs, the only.

• 8:27Steven Rinella?

  What were the odors?

• 8:28Speaker 07

  The odors, we, we used actually what people use for nose work. So that's anis and birch. It just, those are just ones that, those are the classic ones that people use to train pet dogs. And, and, but we really had a tiny, tiny amount. Like, you walk in, you wouldn't think, this is a smelly room. And then people were blindfolded, and we, in a large room, and we would, we took them to a specific place, but we, we did very meandering path and turned them around and around. So they really had no idea where they were. They couldn't use path integration to know, like, where they had come in for the door.

• 9:08Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 9:08Speaker 07

  And then they were given one minute to smell, that's it. And then we would do the same meandering, turn them around, turn them around, bring them back out. We take off the blindfold and the ear, you know, and the earmuffs, and then say, okay, go back and find that place. And the only odor, and we did all this, you know, carbon, you know, scrubbing the room of odors before and after. So we was really, we just had those two odors. And, and people could find that space again statistically above, above chance. And, and when I did it, as, you know.

• 9:42Steven Rinella?

  When you say that space, that spot they were standing in.

• 9:45Speaker 07

  That spot, yeah. It's, and so, no one's ever done that experiment with any other animal. We think that, but, but, but we did it with humans, because the humans are easy to train. And, you know, I was in, I'm in a psychology department, and as I say, humans are really good for some things. And this was an experiment where humans were really, we, we started doing dogs first, and it was like a real pain to train them accurately, so we switched to humans. And then it turns out, humans could do it. So, but, the point of it is so much of our, our processing is unconscious, that humans are probably orienting to odors all the time and don't know it.

• 10:27Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 10:28Speaker 07

  Now, I was, when I ran the experiment as a subject, I told the students, I mean, I designed the experiment, and I said, um, I, I have no idea where I was. I'm never gonna. And, and I would still go back, and I would be back in their accurate place. So consciously, I thought, I didn't know where it was.

• 10:48Steven Rinella?

  Like, you had a, you had a nasal sort of like. Like the relative odors hitting you, this is where you'd have to go.

• 10:57Speaker 07

  Yes, yes.

• 10:58Steven Rinella?

  To find that same blend of smells.

• 11:01Speaker 07

  That's, that's.

• 11:02Steven Rinella?

  Where in a room?

• 11:03Speaker 07

  Exactly. And that's the, the, the thing about odors is you think about the world, there's all these, um, odor plumes coming from a forest, a stream, a lake, all that. And they've, and you know, wind direction can be fairly, um, standard. I mean, it's gonna come down a, a slope. Um, you know, it's gonna come along a plane a certain way. And so when you've got two streams of odors crossing, then that blend can become predictable. I mean, that's what, that's what we proposed and that's what we found in, in humans. Even though, without conscious awareness necessarily.

• 11:37Steven Rinella?

  What is it?

• 11:40Steven Rinella?

  Like, uh,

• 11:42Steven Rinella?

  what is the smell that we smell best? Cause I've heard people explain that we're super good on sulfur.

• 11:49Speaker 07

  Um, you know, I.

• 11:50Steven Rinella?

  Is that, is there like, is there some truth to that? There's like some things that we can detect at parts per, parts per million that maybe other things wouldn't know, like we're good at certain smells?

• 12:01Speaker 07

  No, I, I, and I'm, um, I'm, I know that I think the smell of a corked wine is apparently something that maybe that's the sulfur. I'm, I don't have those facts right at my fingertips right this minute, um, but there definitely, um, people like Gordon Shepard have shown that humans are better at, um, there, there are sense that humans can detect better than a dog, definitely. I mean, you know, our olfactory system is really specialized for the species. Like we all have different, um, components. You know, we've all got these olfactory receptor genes, but, um, people actually even in different continents will have different, um,

• 12:43Speaker 07

  receptor genes. And then plus over your lifetime, you can change the, the function of those genes by your experience. That's called these epigenetic processes. And that's been shown in mice so that, um, and actually in humans, um, there've, there've been, there's certain odors that most, there, there's like, I don't know, a certain percentage of people can't smell. Like 20% of people. And you can take those people and train them for two months and then they can smell it.

• 13:12Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 13:12Speaker 07

  Yes, yes. And, and, and there's some evidence that with a lot of training, you know, um, the olfactory bulb, um, which is the, the part of the brain that detects everything, um, actually changes in volume and, and size. And can actually increase. And in most, in all other vertebrates, uh, humans, it's, it's, it's a little less, a little more controversial, but, um, the olfactory bulb has, continues to add new neurons, new nerve cells throughout life. Uh, and so, and in mammals, there's really only two places that keep adding neurons throughout life.

• 13:56Speaker 07

  And one is the olfactory bulb and the other is this brain structure that it's massively connected to, which is, um, the hippocampus, which is, guess what? A navigation center.

• 14:10Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no kidding. Huh. I had a question about the, just the way our sense of smell developed. I'm getting from it that sort of the whole reason for it is just because we liked to eat different things.

• 14:25Speaker 07

  I mean, that, no, that's actually true. I mean, we, no, we, but we had a really good sense of smell, um, before that. And, um, and so that's, that's something that I've actually, um, published on is why, um, humans are the only great ape that has an external nose. So if you think, um, about gorilla, orangutan, chimp, I mean, there's very few great apes species left. Um, there used to be a lot, but now there's just five of us. Um, but if you also think about all the, um, the hominids that came before our genus Homo, if you think about all the, um, Australopithecus,

• 15:06Speaker 07

  we've got their skulls and you can see from the skull that there's a bone right here, the naxon, that, um, you can feel your own bone and it's kind of like a ski jump. And, um, and so if you look at a human skull, like your skull, you've got, um, a bone that sticks out, um, on top and then a, um, a bone that sticks up on the bottom. And so there's actually forensic psychologists or pathologists, you can give them a skull of human and they can reconstruct the nose of that person, like a hundred percent accuracy. Um, whereas they say, you can never do that with an ear, you know, um, but the note, you know, but the nose because, so they, and they do that.

• 15:48Speaker 07

  They take a picture of the person before they were, you know, dead, and then they've got their skull and then they, you know, so they've done really nice controlled studies to show that nose shape is extremely individual and it can get reconstructed from, from the skulls. So we can go back and look at Australopithecus and know they didn't have an external nose.

• 16:10Steven Rinella?

  When you say an external nose, you mean just like this stick out thing?

• 16:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, right. This stick out thing.

• 16:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I never thought about that. Like, like, uh, a gorilla, he's flush.

• 16:20Speaker 07

  That's right. That's right. And if you look at a gorilla skull, it's, you know, it just, it's completely flush. Yeah. Or any, any of the great apes.

• 16:29Steven Rinella?

  What is that? Why, why does our nose stick out?

• 16:31Speaker 07

  So that's my, that was funny you should ask. Um, so.

• 16:37Steven Rinella?

  So you can stick it into stuff?

• 16:38Speaker 07

  No, well, no. So, um, actually, you know, I'm a squirrel biologist, but in, um, there was only one hypothesis to propose why. And that was proposed in 1913, um, which was it, it, um, humidifies the air before it hits your lungs. It, you know, if you've got cold, dry air, you know, you don't want that in your lungs. I mean, that makes sense, you know, it's, it's, so it's an air conditioner. Um, but I came on the scene and thinking about dog, you know, animal noses, um, think, well, it doesn't have something to do with olfaction. And, um, and anthropologists had never considered that the human nose had an, an olfactory function. I mean, it was all been the air conditioning hypothesis.

• 17:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 07

  And so this was like 2015 and, um, just then I was really lucky. There were some really great anthropologists who were coming out and saying, you know, the old air conditioning hypothesis does not hold. We've tested it, these assumptions, it's not working anymore. And, um, so it was perfect timing for me to waltz in and say, you know, hey, I'm a squirrel person, but I think we, no, I think we need to consider this, um, this. And so basically what I proposed is if you look across the animal kingdom,

• 17:58Speaker 07

  how animals orient in space is by using, uh, stereo olfaction. So if you think about stereo vision, that's like, you know, if you can close one eye, you've got mono, two eyes stereo. And predators have stereo because it's for depth perception, right? I mean, you can estimate distance better. Well, 1964, there was a great, um, Hungarian biologist who suggested, why can't olfaction work that way? And the, in the sixties, people were already testing it with honeybees. So if you've got, they've got antenna, right? And so if you immobilize one antenna or you cut one antenna and then you give them a really, um, simple, um,

• 18:44Speaker 07

  uh, choice test, it's called a Y maze. So, you know, do you turn left or right to get to the reward? Um, honeybees were, they couldn't do it if it was fixed and they couldn't do if it was, if it was cut. And, um, and so.

• 18:59Steven Rinella?

  Like to say, so just to make sure I'm getting this, I mean, the same way stereo hearing, well, how do you describe that?

• 19:07Speaker 07

  No, stereo, exact, stereo audition. Yeah, yeah.

• 19:10Steven Rinella?

  I, you're, I, I can close my eyes and if Yanni talks, I know he's over here.

• 19:14Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 19:15Steven Rinella?

  Right. But if I, if I didn't have two ears, I would just know, it would feel like an omnipresent sound.

• 19:20Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 19:20Steven Rinella?

  Not directional.

• 19:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 19:22Steven Rinella?

  So you say with these honeybees, you clip one and he can't tell if the smell's coming from left or right?

• 19:28Speaker 07

  Right, right, right. And so meanwhile, um, what's, if you, um, they did it with slugs who have tentacles, you know, they don't have antenna, but they've got tentacles, exactly the same result. Um, they did it, they've done it with, um, hermit crabs, which have, um, not hermit crabs, they do, I think it was lobsters because they have antennaeles and it's the same thing, antenna form things. And they cut it, the same thing. And then the, the really cool result was, um, garter snakes, which have, you know, forked tongues. And it turns out the forked tongue, they're, they take.

• 20:04Steven Rinella?

  No way.

• 20:05Speaker 07

  Yes, yes. And they, if you cut one tine of that forked tongue, they, they are less, um, they, you know, they're slightly disoriented.

• 20:14Steven Rinella?

  They get lost.

• 20:15Speaker 07

  They, if you give them a simple task, like, you know, left or right, they're, they're worse at it, you know?

• 20:20Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 20:21Speaker 07

  Yeah. And, um, and that's because, whoops, um, the, what they're doing is, you know, they are out there with a tongue, um, sampling airborne odors.

• 20:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 07

  And they pick it up on the two tines of that tongue. They bring it back in. They're actually using a different olfactory system. That's, um, um, called the vomeronasal system. And there's two pits in the palate, the hard palate of the mouth. And they bring the tine in and they literally pick up with chemicals, bringing it and they stick it into those pits.

• 20:55Steven Rinella?

  No way.

• 20:56Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 20:56Steven Rinella?

  Each little tongue, each little prong has his own little pit?

• 21:00Speaker 07

  What? Yes, yes. And, and, um.

• 21:03Steven Rinella?

  And they deliver it back into his mouth.

• 21:05Speaker 07

  Right, exactly. And that's what, um, and if you see a snake do it, that's exactly what a snake's doing. It's going to check, you know, sample, sample, sample. And then what is it? Sample, sample, sample?

• 21:15Steven Rinella?

  About that forked tongue business.

• 21:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. And is what's really cool is that, um, these evolutionary biologists, if you look at, um, there's lizards, you know, snakes are basically really just specialized lizards and they're lizards that have forked tongues versus lizards that don't have a, don't have a forked tongue. And the lizards with forked tongues are more mobile, they're more predatory. They move at greater speeds, all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's, um, it's definitely.

• 21:45Steven Rinella?

  God, man, I didn't know that. Have you ever, I don't know if you ever noticed this, if you're, let's say you'd like be walking around the woods. Okay, or walking down the road and you'll all of a sudden get hit where you know there's something dead and rotten.

• 21:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:59Steven Rinella?

  It is so hard to find it.

• 22:02Speaker 07

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 22:03Steven Rinella?

  Do you know, like, you're like, you know what I'm talking about, dude, something is dead. But you can't, it's, it's like, um, it's like hearing a high pitched noise, you can't tell where it's coming from.

• 22:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:15Steven Rinella?

  You become aware something's dead somewhere.

• 22:17Speaker 07

  Right, right, right. And that's

• 22:19Steven Rinella?

  But I feel like if you have a dog with you, that some bitch is on that smell like in seconds. Like to him, it's not confusing.

• 22:26Speaker 07

  Well, and it could be because we are really sensitive to that smell. And so like, you know, we're probably, like, that, that could be something that we are incredibly sensitive to. And so it's all around us. But a dog, I mean, is specialized to, to hone, to track location of scent. So they, they've got a completely different, not only do they have twice as many olfactory receptors as us, but they also, like, inside the nose, they have a whole area where when they're sniffing in, it's, um, it like, like, they open up the, the front of their nose.

• 23:09Speaker 07

  And, um, and it gets sucked in and it goes straight to the olfactory area. It's really, like, there's a little corral that the air comes in and boom, it goes right into that corral. And we don't have that. Ours is kind of flat. So, you know, we're never gonna be as good at localizing odor as a dog.

• 23:29Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 23:31Speaker 03

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• 25:02Steven Rinella?

  You know, another one that, that hits you like you can't tell where it's coming from real bad is the smell of a skunk.

• 25:09Speaker 07

  Oh, that's interesting. That, and that's, uh,

• 25:11Steven Rinella?

  That's just like, it's everywhere.

• 25:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 25:13Steven Rinella?

  But nowhere.

• 25:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:15Steven Rinella?

  And I have personal experience where I had, uh, I had a, like a cattle hypodermic needle in my garage and I had had some skunk essence in that thing. And for weeks, it was a family mystery. Why did the whole garage smell like skunk?

• 25:34Speaker 07

  Right.

• 25:34Steven Rinella?

  No, you could walk around that garage all you wanted.

• 25:37Speaker 07

  Right.

• 25:37Steven Rinella?

  And no one was able to go like, oh, it's coming from right there.

• 25:40Speaker 07

  That's

• 25:40Steven Rinella?

  It was just everywhere all at once.

• 25:43Speaker 07

  Well, I wonder if that's because it's so potent, like, we are so sulfur, we're so sensitive to sulfur. Or if whatever that is, that it just needs one molecule.

• 25:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 07

  And, um,

• 25:56Steven Rinella?

  It overwhelms you.

• 25:57Speaker 07

  And, well, you know, so, and, and, and how odor moves, it's, it's mostly through, um, it's through air temperature, actually. So convection and people, um, it's, so you, so you can put, like, if you had skunk in a room with vacuum sealed, it wouldn't move at all. It would stay in that one place. But as soon as it's, it's, you've got higher, you've got wind, I mean, tiny amounts of temperature differences will, will start with small wind movements. And so your garage, you've got wind, even though it doesn't feel like

• 26:38Speaker 07

  and so you, so imagine that your nose only needs three molecules of skunk to say, there's a skunk. And every single place in the garage has three molecules of skunk. So there's just no way to find it. Whereas

• 26:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:53Speaker 07

  The dog is like, I mean, the other thing about odor is that you, you habituate to it. And so then it becomes a background that, and then you can smell, um, something, you can smell the foreground.

• 27:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 07

  And, and in fact, with mice, the faster they smell, the more the, they, they can have like, um, a smell they're looking for. And the faster they smell, the more it separates the foreground from the background. So when a dog starts looking for something, you know, they'll be sniffing really fast. They'll, they'll, they'll be, they're trying to discriminate, right? And that's, that's what they're doing. They're trying to, you know, background one set of smells and foreground, you know, the other.

• 27:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's funny. Yanni's dog, when he's, he's got his hound dog.

• 27:47Steven Rinella?

  For that dog, like, if you set a duffel bag in my house, I have like a little mutt dog. It's gonna be like, not that, it'll give it a passing whiff. His dog basically has to sit down and, and spend 15 minutes on that duffel bag. Do you know what I mean? Like

• 28:06Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 28:06Steven Rinella?

  Every aspect of that duffel bag that like explores it.

• 28:11Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 28:12Steven Rinella?

  You know, it's like, so even within that, even within dogs, they're on a separate.

• 28:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:18Steven Rinella?

  They're like, these two dogs are on a whole separate trip.

• 28:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:21Steven Rinella?

  What they, like, with what

• 28:23Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 28:24Steven Rinella?

  They're thinking and doing.

• 28:25Speaker 07

  Absolutely. And a, and a lot of that is breed, um, you know, obviously that's why people have different breeds for different kinds of hunting, but, um, also personality and, um, and, and experience. And, you know,

• 28:39Steven Rinella?

  That's something you don't think about, personality and experience.

• 28:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, and this is actually a huge area now in animal behavior is a personality. And showing that animals have different personalities from the, you know, and you can measure it throughout an animal's lifetime. And they will respond differently to, um, the same circum, the same situation reliably.

• 29:04Steven Rinella?

  The same animal will respond differently?

• 29:07Speaker 07

  No, the same animal respond, like the animals who are, um, actually worked on chickadees, um, who are bold, who explore more.

• 29:17Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 29:17Speaker 07

  And, and then who, who, the others who are cautious and who explore more slowly. And, um, as it's even genetically based, so you can have a bold father and a cautious mother. And they will have chicks, some of which are bold, some of which are cautious. And depending on what the food situation is that year, it might be that a bold bird does better. And then you'll see the, the ones with more bold chicks do better. And there's more bold birds in the next generations.

• 29:49Steven Rinella?

  And then someone's got a house cat outside and the bold bird. Is that a real disadvantage? Is that a real disadvantage?

• 29:57Speaker 07

  Right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

• 30:00Steven Rinella?

  Hey, uh, what, uh,

• 30:04Steven Rinella?

  what, okay, when we smell like it's all through the air, right? Or like you said, you taste it.

• 30:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:09Steven Rinella?

  But what's going on when a fish smells something? Is he smelling like?

• 30:12Speaker 07

  Yes, yes.

• 30:13Steven Rinella?

  Is he tasting it or smelling it? Or what is he doing?

• 30:15Speaker 07

  Well, they're

• 30:15Steven Rinella?

  Cause it's all in the water.

• 30:16Speaker 07

  Both, both, I mean, both actually like, you know, fish have, can have taste receptors all over their body, like catfish. So they, they can literally taste with their whole body. Um, that's different. They're really specialized, like someone like a catfish, a real olfactory specialist.

• 30:30Steven Rinella?

  Theoretically, take a catfish and hold his head out of the water.

• 30:34Speaker 07

  And, and put, yeah.

• 30:35Steven Rinella?

  Dunk his body in the water and he's conducting some smell type activity.

• 30:40Speaker 07

  He's like, mm, delicious. Yeah.

• 30:42Steven Rinella?

  With his head out of the, I mean, I know that it wouldn't work, but like theoretically.

• 30:45Speaker 07

  Theoretically, I think that, right, because, I mean, I know, and I think that's true of a lot of, I think goldfish, catfish. But, um, their olfactory system is incredibly good. And they, um, I mean, we're basically fish, you know, we never, we have the same brain as a fish. We have the same skeleton as a fish. We just like, you can take a fish skeleton and, and stretch it. And, and it, you know, it looks like our skeleton is not that different from a fish skeleton 400 million years ago. So, and the brain

• 31:16Steven Rinella?

  Backbone, ribs, whatever.

• 31:18Speaker 07

  Everything. And, and, and most of the brain, not the big cerebral cortex, but most of the, most of the other things in the brain that I've talked about, that's all in the fish, is all there before we left the water. So, but fish, the big difference is bony fish have, um, four nostrils. So they've got, um, two sets. Oh, they've got anterior and a posterior. And so they've got water comes in through the anterior. It goes through the olfactory epithelium. That's us up here. That's where ours is. Goes through it and on the top of the snout, and then it comes out the back. And

• 31:56Steven Rinella?

  Comes out the back?

• 31:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, because they've got like four holes in their, in the top of their snout. So two are input, two are output.

• 32:04Steven Rinella?

  Oh, good.

• 32:05Speaker 07

  And so they come in, it goes out. And, but what's different about fish is because they can smell anything that is, can be, um, dissolved in water. So you can have like big molecules, um, huge things like peptides that a fish can suck in to their nostrils. And they've got receptors to, um, to, to tell them what it is.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  And so you've got aquatic animals like, um,

• 32:40Speaker 07

  have completely different olfactory receptors because they can smell tiny things, big things, as long as it can be dissolved in water. And they can suck it in, they can smell it.

• 32:50Steven Rinella?

  Anything water soluble?

• 32:54Speaker 07

  And um, and then you get frogs which live, you know, both in water and in the air and they've got some water, you know, receptors and some air receptors and you look at their.

• 33:09Steven Rinella?

  Also, he can, a frog can smell out of like, like a bullfrog can smell up in the air or down in the water.

• 33:13Speaker 07

  Right, right. And they've got, they've got like a valve that they can close so that they can smell, you know, one way or the other. Um, and other animals have done, like sea turtles can do that.

• 33:26Speaker 07

  But, uh, but then when we came onto land, when man, you know, when vertebrates came on the land and then we never went back, you know, you can't, what happens is we became completely land-based terrestrial animals.

• 33:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 07

  And then we lost the ability to smell things in water. Because you know, you, you can't snuff up, you're not gonna smell anything, um, in water and we became air specialists. So once, and so if you look at the, the, you know, the genome of land animals, it, it, it went from the fish genome to the frog genome, which is kind of 50/50. And then it became the, you know, the land genome, which is all air, um,

• 34:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 07

  air genes. Um, and, um, so that's when we became really specialized for, um, orienting only in air. And but that means that our nose can only detect little molecules that are volatile that are in the air. We can't detect big, big molecules because guess what? They don't travel in the air.

• 34:33Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 34:35Speaker 07

  So, um, so what I, what I realized was, um, all these other animals are using antenna for stereo olfaction and they need it to orient. And it turns out that, um, basically what we've, uh, what, um, this external rubbery mammal nose is, um, is a couple of tubes. And if you, and the physicists have shown that if you suck air through a tube fast, what happens is kind of acts like an antenna. So an antenna is where, you know, you can,

• 35:17Speaker 07

  if you want to orient space, you want to have a sample here and a sample here, right?

• 35:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 07

  So you don't want the samples close together. You want the far apart. And so if, if you've got tubes on your face and you suck in air fast, the, the air comes from further away. It's just, it's just, um, they did this purely with tubes. Physics is my collaborator, John Camali did this. Um, and so what, what I proposed is that humans are basically tube noses. Um, and the other tube nose, um, group is the, the seabirds, albatross and the, um, shearwaters. Those are called literally the tube nose proceleriforms are called tube nose seabirds.

• 36:03Speaker 07

  And those seabirds like, um, petrels, albatrosses, they are specialized. They spent most of their life in the air looking for, um, you know, food on the ocean, which is like, as Gabby Nevin says, like a needle in a haystack. And the way they orient, and she's done work on this, is they orient to a smell. So there's, um, when krill eat phytoplankton, they emit, um, disulfide, um, what was it? Anyway, they, they emit a sulfur compound.

• 36:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 36:39Speaker 07

  And the birds, um, can detect that from far away and then they come in because.

• 36:44Steven Rinella?

  No way, really?

• 36:45Speaker 07

  Yes. And that means, because the krill means that's where they're, they're gonna find, um, fish and, um, and food.

• 36:51Steven Rinella?

  You're kidding me? They can smell krill under the water somewhere by what's coming up?

• 36:56Speaker 07

  By what's, what's, it's being released. Um, yeah, uh, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a disulfide compound.

• 37:02Steven Rinella?

  Whatever it is, I won't have, I won't have heard of it.

• 37:04Speaker 07

  No, it's methyl disulfide. Yeah, I'm just trying to show off my, my chemistry, which is like, can I can't, just remember that one is methyl disulfide. Um, no, it's, and, and birds actually, there's studies now in seagulls and homing pigeons and little songbirds that if you block their olfactory system, they are disoriented.

• 37:27Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 37:27Speaker 07

  Yes, yes. No, it's, and birds and, you know, up and people saying, that does make sense. But then, you know, there, there's atmospheric, um, winds that are carrying odor from like continents that, which is actually a lot of information.

• 37:43Steven Rinella?

  How he can find his way back to land.

• 37:45Speaker 07

  Right. So, so anyway, so there's the tube nose birds. And so what I proposed is humans are the tube nose apes. We, you know, we were the only ape that have this thing. And, and then since there's been studies showing that, yeah, if you block one nostril, um, with humans, when, um, if you, if you blindfold them and put them to track, um, a coconut, I mean, a, a chocolate trail across some grass that, um, if you, if you block one nostril or you swap the inputs to nostril, they put a big mask that either blocks one or swaps. So this was Noam Sopel's work at Berkeley, it was great work. Um, that the humans are disoriented.

• 38:30Steven Rinella?

  Who?

• 38:30Speaker 07

  Yeah. And so humans can orient, just like a dog, you know, a, through a trail. I mean, they can track. Um, and, and then Ken Contanion did this work with, um, moles where he put tubes in their star-nosed moles. He put little tubes in their nose. And all they had to do was, you know, move a few centimeters to find an earthworm. And if you, if you block one tube or if you cross the tube, so you've got the inputs coming across, completely disoriented. The mole is just like walking over the earthworm and can't find it. So that shows you that it's not just, um, the amount of data that's coming in.

• 39:14Speaker 07

  It's where, is it coming in on the left or the right? So it's just like you were saying about your ears.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  I'm gonna be walking through the woods, navigating in a whole different sense here in, in two weeks when September kicks off.

• 39:29Speaker 07

  You know, I would.

• 39:30Steven Rinella?

  But you know, here's the deal though about the birds.

• 39:34Steven Rinella?

  Uh,

• 39:37Steven Rinella?

  lot of, like, if you're hunting a lot of stuff, you need to be very aware of the wind.

• 39:43Steven Rinella?

  Because you gotta come in from downwind, else it's gonna smell you. But when you, no, no one plays the wind tur, with turkeys.

• 39:53Speaker 07

  Well, that, but, but turkey actually, well, turkey vultures are really good.

• 39:57Steven Rinella?

  No, I'm talking the turkey turkey.

• 39:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:59Steven Rinella?

  There's no, maybe it's just a thing people miss. There's no sense of needing to hide from a turkey's nose.

• 40:05Speaker 07

  That's right. And, and that's probably true, though.

• 40:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you think that is true?

• 40:08Speaker 07

  Well, there's more work now, birds, little songbirds, um, they avoid nest holes that have, if you put a predator odor in there. Um, there's work, work now about mate choice in birds, even like zebra finches, little desert birds that are choosing mates based on odor. Um.

• 40:25Steven Rinella?

  So you think it's possible that a turkey could smell you?

• 40:28Speaker 07

  Oh, I, I, but I think it's, it's, I think vision and olfaction, we all have, we all have both and it, and what you use depends on who you are and the context. And so turkey has got such great, incredible vision. You know, color vision, incredible acuity and hearing, you know? And they're probably getting 90% of their, uh, but I bet, I can't, I, I wonder if there, if there isn't some.

• 40:56Steven Rinella?

  Dude, that'd be some good study for you to work on. Is can a turkey get a whiff of a person?

• 41:02Speaker 07

  Yes, yes.

• 41:03Steven Rinella?

  And change its course because it winded you. Cause we are, we assume that they have no ability to catch your wind.

• 41:12Speaker 07

  Yeah. Um, I, I would say it's, it, you know, it isn't no ability. It's kind of like, um, if you look at like David, um, next work on wolves, they start by its olfactory. And then at some point, they, you know, they, they know from the concentration that they're right on, they're very close and then they're gonna switch to vision.

• 41:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Speaker 07

  And I'm sure you know this from your, you know, your dogs that, so it's not like they don't have one or the other. Um, and, and sighthounds, of course, are gonna be more visual uh, because they're big, open, plain desert breeds, right? So it's gonna, vision makes more sense than olfaction because, um, when things are dry, um, that's, you know, that's bad for olfaction. You, olfaction, you want.

• 42:02Steven Rinella?

  That was one of his questions, yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 07

  I, I, yeah, you want it cold and, and, um, well, actually warm and humid is perfect. Um, but, but definitely humid. And, um,

• 42:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, we, we know.

• 42:15Steven Rinella?

  I'm looking at him to see if this clicks with, with Houndsman lore.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I'm, and I'm, I'm just reserved because I, I don't know if we're gonna, are we getting, are we gonna get in, get into the hounds and stuff? Before we get to the hound dog question, I think we've, we had this one in, when we were discussing having Lucian, but like, does a, speaking of animals and their relationship to, you know, wind and smelling each other and the predator prey relationship, does a predator like a mountain lion know that it emits an odor and thus it has to be downwind when it's approaching a prey animal?

• 42:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, do they play the wind?

• 42:53Speaker 07

  Absolutely, absolutely. They, I mean, because they're incredibly, I mean, they're, you know, mountain lions are, are very different. I mean, felids are gonna use odor less than canids. So, so wolf, a wolf or coyote is gonna be using odor very differently than a mountain lion, which is ambush predator. Um, so they're, they're gonna be up in a perch, right? Going, going to ambush. Um, that they're gonna use odor and they're gonna certainly be aware of their own odor.

• 43:21Steven Rinella?

  You think so?

• 43:21Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, we live in this, um, I was just thinking this about this. Um, it's like the odor internet, you know, the world is, is basically an odor landscape that we're, we're stupid about. Um, but all these other animals, they, I mean, the plants have got their own odors. The plants are communicating, the animals are, you know, communicating and, um, and what's, what's actually interesting is that sometimes, um, predator odor, um, is actually attractive to a prey animal because they recognize that is not a scary, that, that

• 44:04Speaker 07

  predator is not a problem. Cause I know that predator and so I'm gonna, you know, I'll be attracted, I'm gonna get more information by spending more time with that predator. And, and so you can do the same experiment where that another individual's like, no, no, I'm, I'm a little smaller and that's a dangerous predator to me. So if I smell that, I'm gonna be out of here. But, um, what was it? There was a study, this is insane, in gray kangaroos in Australia that were, um, they gave them, and which are like sixty, sixty, a hundred pound animals, you know, they're big, right? Um, they're, if you just, a naive one was not at

• 44:43Speaker 07

  all, um, uh, put off by the smell of a, um, Tasmanian devil, which is, you know, an aggressive carnivore. It's much smaller, but it's aggressive. Um, but if you gave them, um, Tasmanian devil's scent, they, they, they didn't avoid it. This is like an experimental situation. But if you gave them the scent of Tasmanian devil who had eaten gray kangaroo, it was incredibly aversive. So the kangaroo-

• 45:12Steven Rinella?

  No way, really?

• 45:12Speaker 07

  Yes, the kangaroo knew-

• 45:14Steven Rinella?

  He's smelling that little combo.

• 45:17Speaker 07

  That that predator, that twelve kilogram predator eats me and therefore I'm gonna avoid that predator. And they didn't before. So, I mean, that's the kind of information that is in scent.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  Okay, but see, people, there have been hunters that have tried to switch over to a vegetarian diet.

• 45:37Speaker 07

  Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting.

• 45:40Steven Rinella?

  They're crazy, but my dad, my dad had a buddy, my dad had a buddy that would eat all kind of apples and drink all kind of apple juice before bowls.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  But I think that was so that when they would pee, they would make a scent that would be attractive to deer being apples.

• 45:57Steven Rinella?

  Thinking about seeming like a not meat, yeah, he was thinking about that he would just seem like-

• 46:01Speaker 05

  So how long would it take for me to eat a completely, I don't know, vegetarian diet?

• 46:07Speaker 07

  I think you should go vegan for two months. No, no, I mean, you really-

• 46:11Steven Rinella?

  Until, until a deer eats deer.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  Until, right? Until a deer be like, oh, no worries. Don't worry about that guy.

• 46:18Speaker 07

  I mean, you know, you also have, you know, in general, if one per human is not eating, um, eating me, but everybody else is, you know, they might say, you know what, I'm just gonna be-

• 46:31Speaker 05

  So it's not on an individual basis?

• 46:33Speaker 07

  No, but, but you know, I, that's an interesting, that's an interesting question. I think if you had, if you were tracking one particular deer, like, you know, just you had an individual relationship and then you, um, you went vegan for six months. I mean, I don't know how, you know, people do these experiments, you know, like how long does it take for you to be able to smell garlic on your breath or something you've been eating? I mean, I, it comes out, you know, all that, everything you're eating is coming out through your skin. Um, apparently, um, this, actually, I read that, that in Vietnam War, the Vietcong could smell American troops coming in because they smelled like, is what they said, spoiled milk, because they were cheese eaters and that wasn't in the Vietnamese cult cuisine.

• 47:18Steven Rinella?

  My dad, my dad said that, he, he was in World War Two. He said the smell of Germans to make the hair on the back was neck stand up. And, but he thought it was this, he thought they had a kind of cigarette.

• 47:30Speaker 07

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 47:32Steven Rinella?

  And they had, you know, the crowd, the whole crowd thing. He thought they had a kind of cigarette and he could smell that cigarette. And he said it'd make the hair on his neck stand up. And he said he could smell their food and make the hair on the back. And he said, if you walked into a building, like when you were pushing them out and you came into the buildings that they were in, he said it was just like the, like the worst. Cause just the association.

• 47:55Speaker 07

  The association, right. That's right. That's right. No, that's, well, that's why, and I bet, you know, forty years later, I bet you, if you could bottle that smell and give it to him, he would immediately be back in that, in that situation. I mean, this is why-

• 48:10Steven Rinella?

  Oh, he never, yeah, he never, I can tell you that his, his hatred stayed through, through life. So it would have been a bad smell.

• 48:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, bad smell. Right, right. No, I mean, olfactory PTSD, you know, people, real, real thing, you know, combat smells and, and things like that. Yeah.

• 48:26Steven Rinella?

  Before we do our hound dog chapter, I got, I got, I got another deer question for you. Well, two deer questions. Would it make sense? And you're, you're in a weird position now where you're given like hunting advice. What, like, could you picture a world in which you,

• 48:44Steven Rinella?

  like, a world in which you acclimated, like, like Yanni has a property in Wisconsin, a family place they like to hunt deer on. Is there a world in which you somehow broadcast, throughout the year, you had a canister that just broadcasts human odor?

• 49:03Steven Rinella?

  So that the landscape was just awash in human odor throughout the year and that you would create a scenario where deer were just, that was just what the area smelled like?

• 49:15Steven Rinella?

  And they would never, and then when they smelled a person, it just didn't matter because the area was constantly awash. Like he hung all of his clothes and stuff in a tree and just had to be that that tree just smells that way. And then it would be that later, when you're there, they wouldn't even know because it always smells that way.

• 49:39Speaker 07

  Um, the thing is that they, it's, um, you're gonna walk in and, um, and they're gonna say, oh, there's the guy who ate a hamburger yesterday. It's a fresh scent, you know, it's not just-

• 49:52Steven Rinella?

  Like, you're never gonna like, cause they're picking it apart too much.

• 49:55Speaker 07

  But, I mean, at the same time, you know, if you go to like Galapagos Islands where they've never had predators, you walk up to any animal and, and, and, you know, it, it's cultural. I mean, whether or not they're afraid of, um, I have a friend who studied elephants and, um, they, um, the Maasai used a certain, um, kind of, um, you know, clayed, it was kind of a decoration, but it would, you know, had a scent. And as soon as an elephant smelled that, they were out of there because the Maasai were, you know, elephant hunters. So, I mean, it's association. Um, now what you could do is, um, I mean, if you say that you, there was something like that the, the deer liked, that they, that was their favorite food or

• 50:39Speaker 07

  something like that. And, and you put, um, you could do an association between your scent and their favorite food, you could maybe counter condition it. Um, so that they're going, oh, that's good, you know, that's, that's a good thing. That's a good, particularly, um, but, you know, the first time one deer sees you with a gun and gives that signal, um, it's all over, you know, because all the other deer are gonna, uh, cause your scent is around and the other deer is around. I mean, no, and, and you can, um, there's, there's, um, animals have to learn, you know, sometimes who, who predators are. And that's been shown

• 51:22Speaker 07

  in ferrets that they, you know, they have to, um, they learn, like the first time they have a bad experience or they see another adult with a bad experience, um, they go, okay, that's predator. I didn't know, now I do, and I'm never gonna forget that. Um, and you can do, there's like, um, the study of blackbirds in, in Europe where, um, they, the naive bird in the lab, never heard and never seen a predator. And then you have another blackbird and you have a stuffed owl and the, the one who's experienced sees the owl and gives an alarm call. And it only takes one trial for the bird who's never seen an owl to see the owl and go, oh, that's a predator. And from the rest of his, you know, like-

• 52:07Steven Rinella?

  He carries it with him.

• 52:07Speaker 07

  And, and sees an owl, it's gonna give an alarm call. And every time it gives an alarm call, a naive bird's gonna see, what's it looking at? Owl, that's an owl. And you can, um, and they did, and then they took away the owl and they put a milk bottle there and they trained, um, and they like played the alarm call to a milk bottle. And the, the bird in the lab says, oh, that's a predator. And-

• 52:33Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 52:33Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 52:34Steven Rinella?

  You could train them to think that a milk bottle was trouble?

• 52:36Speaker 07

  They, they hear, you know, they hear that, that it's like all they need is a call. And so they did that for seven generations, training, you know, blackbirds to be afraid of milk bottles. So, I mean, it's, it's the same thing. And odor is-

• 52:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's crazy. Cause then you got like, you got like generations of birds that they've never seen a milk bottle do anything bad. But they just carry it with them that a milk bottle's no good.

• 52:59Speaker 07

  Because, you know, the thing is, if that's information, you don't wanna have to learn by trial and error. If you've got someone in your population says that's a predator and dangerous, it's like, good enough for me, you know? I mean, it takes a lot. So all the deer in, in your property, they already have know very much that humans are, you know, you've got a human odor. Um, they also know that you're male. They also know what you're eating. They know your stress level. They probably know if you've got a cold. I mean, all that is right in your signature. Um, so you can't escape.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  911, what's your emergency?

• 53:39Speaker 03

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 53:46Speaker 04

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• 55:06Steven Rinella?

  So on this, not on the deer chapter.

• 55:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's, since we're here, let's stay on a deer.

• 55:11Steven Rinella?

  The deer chapter, so let me hit you with a couple, like, uh, let me hit you with a couple of things that are sort of, that float around in hunter legend. Okay. One is that

• 55:22Steven Rinella?

  there's this product that was on the landscape for a long time. What was this idea that you could wear certain clothing?

• 55:30Steven Rinella?

  With like, what is it, carbon? What's in it? Charcoal? You could wear like this charcoal impregnated, whatever.

• 55:37Speaker 05

  No, it's activated carbon.

• 55:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay, activated carbon. You could put a clothes on.

• 55:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:43Steven Rinella?

  And deer wouldn't know you were there.

• 55:48Steven Rinella?

  Do you buy that?

• 55:49Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, most of your odors are coming out of your hair. And I mean, so to humans, that's the other thing. Humans, we are more scent glands than any other great ape. We are the smelly ape. So we've got, and they're all concentrated in our hair, in our armpits, groin. So we are just, um, you know, we're just walking bags of scent. So if you're gonna wear anything carbon blocking, you definitely want to be wearing a whole full head hood, I think.

• 56:20Steven Rinella?

  A head net?

• 56:21Speaker 07

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 56:22Steven Rinella?

  So there's that, there's some that makes some, that makes like a little bit of sense to you.

• 56:27Speaker 07

  It makes a little bit of sense, yeah.

• 56:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay, there's another one that you do.

• 56:32Speaker 07

  But I, can I just say that I bet it depends. It would, it wouldn't take much for a deer to realize, oh, that's a carbon scent, and it comes with a gun. And then all they, they associate this expensive suit with a hunter, and then it's all, and then the game's over.

• 56:47Speaker 05

  Can you explain what's going on there? Is the scent being eliminated? Is the scent being masked? Is?

• 56:52Speaker 07

  Well, it's, I mean, you're masking the human body odor, um, maybe. You're not ma, I mean, you're not masking the face.

• 56:59Speaker 05

  So you're not like removing it? Cause I think the whole thing about with this carbon technology was it somehow it was soaking it up.

• 57:06Speaker 07

  I mean, it would be soaking it up. I mean, but on the inside, yeah. I mean, it would be like a filter, um, but, but, um, for one thing, if you've got any exposed skin, you're constantly emitting, you know, volatiles. But also, um, the suit itself has an odor, right? I mean, it's not, the outside of the suit is not odorless. And so all you need is for one deer to figure out that suit smell means a hunter, and then that deer to give a alarm call to a suit, and then all the other deer know that suit is a predator. And so, I mean, I mean, you have to do some experiments on this, but yeah.

• 57:44Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's another, there's another one that goes like, uh, you create, you put a natural odor down in such enormous quantity. Like, let's say you take like, uh, they call it like a masking scent, okay? Take something like, well, it's not offensive to deer, but it smells strong.

• 58:02Speaker 07

  Right.

• 58:02Steven Rinella?

  So let's say like, uh, a female, the urine from a female deer that's in heat.

• 58:08Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 58:09Steven Rinella?

  Where like, it's attractive.

• 58:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 58:11Steven Rinella?

  But also it's super powerful.

• 58:13Speaker 07

  Right.

• 58:14Steven Rinella?

  And he won't be, the deer won't be able to find my smell.

• 58:18Speaker 07

  Right, right, right, right. That's interesting.

• 58:21Steven Rinella?

  And this is applied in different ways. I'll drown it with this odor. And he won't be able to pick my odor out from this overpowering odor that I'm putting here.

• 58:30Speaker 05

  Vanilla has been popular lately. Like, it's this overpowering vanilla that supposedly.

• 58:35Speaker 07

  Well, that's interesting, and vanilla is very interesting. But I just want to say, it's kind of like the skunk in the garage. It could be that the male, the buck, is so sensitive to female, you know, in, in heat, that, that, um, it just addles his brain. And no, but man, that, that, that he, he's got to be tracking females across huge distances, right? So he's gonna be incredibly sensitive to that. So if you, um, so it, so you, so that would be, um, an odor that you might be able to just overwhelm his system, um, because his, unless his brain habituates.

• 59:09Steven Rinella?

  Like he goes crazy for it?

• 59:10Speaker 07

  Well, he, he, he does, but then he says, there's no female here. And then, then it turns into background. It's like people who live next to pig farms, um, they don't, they can't smell it after a while.

• 59:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 07

  You know, and they go away, and, and then there's, there's like, people study this because, you know, there's lawsuits about pig farms. And I think if you go away for a couple of years, you come back, you can smell it again. Cause you've got, you know, like turnover in your factory system.

• 59:37Speaker 05

  Our, our water, water, the house is pretty sulfuric.

• 59:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  If I'm gone for a week, my first shower back, I'm like, whoa.

• 59:44Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Second shower, um, it's just like normal again.

• 59:47Speaker 07

  Right, right, right, right. So, so, um.

• 59:50Steven Rinella?

  But never mind the dough and pee thing then. Let's take vanilla.

• 59:53Speaker 07

  Vanilla.

• 59:54Steven Rinella?

  Or whatever. Then you would put a smell down, and it would be like this, just wall of smell.

• 59:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Steven Rinella?

  And it would hide the human part.

• 1:00:02Speaker 07

  Well, vanilla is interesting because it actually smells like, um, milk, mammalian milk from, uh, like, human milk. This, this has been, like, it, that's probably maybe one reason we're all attracted to vanilla, vanilla. So that's just interesting. The vanilla is universally considered a very pleasant odor in human cultures.

• 1:00:24Speaker 07

  But, um, yeah, so I, I mean, again, you know, it's, it's also the problem is you're hunting for dinner, and they are trying to save their life. So you've got completely different motivation here. And they're gonna be much more conservative unless, um, unless they're, there's some reason they're not gonna be, because they're, they're really hungry or something.

• 1:00:46Steven Rinella?

  Speak to the mechanics of it.

• 1:00:47Speaker 07

  The mechanics, um.

• 1:00:48Steven Rinella?

  Like, could you put, from, from an animal standpoint, never mind deer, just like an animal, a mammal?

• 1:00:53Speaker 07

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  Overwhelmed.

• 1:00:55Steven Rinella?

  Could you overwhelm them so much with one odor that they're not finding another odor? Like, let's say this, let's say I'm baking a pizza.

• 1:01:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Steven Rinella?

  In my oven, but then I take an ounce of skunk smell and pour it on the counter.

• 1:01:08Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:01:09Steven Rinella?

  You're not gonna come in and be like, oh, I see all the skunk, but I get a little pizza too. You're just getting skunk.

• 1:01:19Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:01:20Steven Rinella?

  So is it, is it theoretically possible that you would replicate that scenario and have it be that you're putting out so much vanilla or piss or whatever?

• 1:01:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Steven Rinella?

  Or, or zucchini bread, that, that a deer is like, all I'm getting is zucchini bread?

• 1:01:38Speaker 07

  No, I think it's possible. At the same time, that's an area they wouldn't want to hang out in because it's too dangerous. Cause you're just making them odor blind, and that's their, and, you know, when I studied kangaroo rats, um, I radio transmitted, you know, and tracked them in the desert. It was so interesting, on a windy night, the kangaroos will not come out of their burrows. And I think it's, yeah, and, and, um, I think it's, it was because, I mean, partly it's the sound is, is, is, but I think it's, I think it's odor. It's like you've got turbulent, suddenly, they don't know where the coyotes are. And, um, and so I think of deer, I bet have a very windy day, so what's your experience?

• 1:02:16Steven Rinella?

  This is hotly debated.

• 1:02:18Speaker 07

  Okay, that's interesting. What is it?

• 1:02:20Speaker 05

  With elk as an elk guide for a decade, yeah, we definitely felt like extreme wind conditions would sort of, would, would settle the movement a little bit.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  Deer, but here's the, here's where this gets tricky. They got deer on collars.

• 1:02:33Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Steven Rinella?

  That are like, next to the eye of a, that are like 20 miles from the eye of a hurricane, and they don't change tune at all.

• 1:02:40Speaker 07

  Well, it depends.

• 1:02:41Steven Rinella?

  Like, they go about their business.

• 1:02:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, but see, so I would say, again, context, where, you know, is that wind coming in reliably laminar from one direction? Or is it like, you know, turbulent? So hurricane is one thing, um, but, um, I mean, they're actually, if, um, there's a study of blue crabs orienting to odors in, um, in, in, in streams, or to artificial streams, they're more, um, they're more accurate orienting to turb, in turbulent streams than, than, um, laminar flow. Because they are adapted to, their whole evolution has been, life is turbulent. And so I met, I mean, it depends where it is.

• 1:03:23Speaker 07

  Like, if, if they're in a windy habitat, that they, they know how wind works, and they've learned about it, um, versus a forest, Elkhorn Forest, no, actually, that's not true, right? They'd be a more open, whitetail, they'd be more, more closed. But, you know, you imagine a forest animal where it's not expecting a lot of wind movement would be more freaked out by, um.

• 1:03:47Speaker 05

  Well, I think both those animals, elk and deer, live in a wide variety of habitats. Both could be open or closed. And probably the one that lives up on, near Shoto, Montana, on the, um.

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  Uh, what do you call that? The Rocky Mountain front where the wind blows a lot.

• 1:04:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Speaker 05

  They like learn to figure out a way to deal with it, right?

• 1:04:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  Use their olfactory senses, deal with it. But when the wind blows like that in Wisconsin, maybe the deer lay low a little bit.

• 1:04:15Steven Rinella?

  You know what works best for them from a, from a predator perspective, like a human predator perspective?

• 1:04:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:20Steven Rinella?

  They are at a huge advantage in a swirling wind.

• 1:04:24Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:25Steven Rinella?

  Huge advantage.

• 1:04:26Speaker 07

  Interesting. Oh, and.

• 1:04:27Steven Rinella?

  I mean, people will just be like, a swirling wind, you're like, never mind.

• 1:04:30Speaker 07

  Oh, because they, no matter what you do, they can smell you.

• 1:04:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Steven Rinella?

  You're not gonna get up on them in a, in a non, like what you want is a, what a predator wants

• 1:04:38Speaker 07

  Right, right.

• 1:04:39Steven Rinella?

  is a very strong west wind.

• 1:04:42Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:04:42Steven Rinella?

  Not very, but like a consistent west wind. Like, okay, I know exactly what I'm gonna do. When you get there and it's like hitting this cheek and then it's on the back of your neck, it's never gonna happen.

• 1:04:50Speaker 07

  Right. And so that's.

• 1:04:52Steven Rinella?

  They know everything that's going on.

• 1:04:53Speaker 07

  And I bet that's why this is so controversial, because I bet everyone's reporting different things based on where they are with different wind conditions and, and you've got, you know, um, animals adapted to local wind conditions. And so sure, in Wisconsin, it's this, but in, in that great, you know, that place where the, the Rocky Mountains are, it's that. And so everyone, the, the deer are gonna have different strategies. They're gonna learn different. The fawns are gonna have learned from their parents. Um, you know, it's all, I mean, they're long-lived animals, social animals. So there's a massive amount of social learning going on. I'm sure they're learning from the adults.

• 1:05:29Steven Rinella?

  In our mind, like in our mind, what they like is, without being able to interview them, speaking of a deer, a white, let's say a white, what he likes, he likes an obstruction to his back.

• 1:05:40Speaker 07

  Yeah. Huh.

• 1:05:42Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:05:43Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 1:05:43Steven Rinella?

  Something behind him.

• 1:05:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Steven Rinella?

  He can see out here.

• 1:05:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:47Steven Rinella?

  And he's in a spot that has swirling wind. Like in our mind, that's like where he's comfy.

• 1:05:52Speaker 07

  That's interesting.

• 1:05:53Steven Rinella?

  You know, then he's like, I'm gonna chill.

• 1:05:55Speaker 07

  So this is what you do. You set up artificial swirling wind on your property and all the deer come in and they love it. And it's swirling wind. And then you go out, just turn it off.

• 1:06:09Steven Rinella?

  And it's big bucks galore. Okay, now we're gonna move into the hound dog chat.

• 1:06:13Speaker 05

  Sounds like a very, like big bucks, like very expensive to set that up on forty acres.

• 1:06:19Speaker 07

  You know?

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  All right, you ready for hound questions?

• 1:06:22Steven Rinella?

  This is the hound dog chat, the anticipated hound dog chat.

• 1:06:26Speaker 05

  I don't know if I, these are in order, but we'll just start with what we have for.

• 1:06:29Steven Rinella?

  Pick your one.

• 1:06:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, let, let's start with the cold-nosed dog and the hot-nosed dog.

• 1:06:35Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 05

  And I think that Nate explained that to you, right?

• 1:06:38Speaker 07

  So it's basically, um, a dog that, um, hot is like a recent trail and the cold is like, it's, it's been there for a while.

• 1:06:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, there, there are dogs out there that are in the same pack.

• 1:06:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 05

  That one will see, find a mountain lion track.

• 1:06:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 05

  But it is old enough to where they smell it and they just, no reaction whatsoever that we can see.

• 1:07:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, they know.

• 1:07:04Speaker 05

  And they keep going.

• 1:07:05Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:07:05Speaker 05

  Uh, another dog in the same pack goes over there that has the cold nose.

• 1:07:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Speaker 05

  And gets on it and boo, you know, here it starts.

• 1:07:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 05

  And they're off to the races. And it could be, some people think that they're running, they don't like that because they're running a three-day-old track and, you know, the lion could be, you, you don't know, it could be in two counties over, right? Anyways, so what causes that?

• 1:07:27Speaker 07

  So, I mean, definitely, you said nature, nurture, that's definitely both. I mean, you're gonna have different personalities. Dogs obviously have different personalities and they have different experiences. And so you've got a dog who has successfully been paying attention to cold. And, and what's cold is, you know, you've got all this dead skin falling down. You've got, um, all this, I mean, this heavy molecules that are falling off you and the mountain lion, and it's all falling into, um, onto the trail. And, um, the more, the, the heavier the molecules are and the more the trail has texture to it, it's not like a, you know, a, a rock surface, but it's like, you know,

• 1:08:12Speaker 07

  grasses, vegetation, that kind of stuff. That's gonna hold those big, heavy molecules longer.

• 1:08:18Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:19Speaker 07

  And so it's gonna be.

• 1:08:19Steven Rinella?

  Like it grabs onto them.

• 1:08:21Speaker 07

  It grabs onto it. There, yeah, literally, you know, has placed for, for it. Um, the other thing that, um, I mean, um, and so, so there's gonna be a lot of signal there and that might be a dog who's had a good, lot of good experiences, um, with that, on that, on that. And it could be.

• 1:08:39Steven Rinella?

  Like he's caught them before.

• 1:08:41Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:08:42Steven Rinella?

  He's like, I don't know, I've picked up smell.

• 1:08:43Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 1:08:44Steven Rinella?

  This old and caught it.

• 1:08:45Speaker 07

  And, and exactly. And, and that's a huge positive reinforcement, you know? It's like that dog is gonna remember. The other thing about olfaction memory is that there, you know,

• 1:08:57Speaker 07

  we don't forget odors and dogs don't forget odors. And they, I mean, that, the odor comes into the brain, it goes right to your emotional centers. And so, and even in humans, you know, odors are encoded really deeply and emotionally. So, I mean, so that's why I can give you the smell of your grandmother's kitchen and you can, you know, you recognize it. Um, and so anyway, so you can have a dog that had a really good experience catching, you know, doing, succeeding on a hunt, but using those heavy molecules. Um, and so, um, and also it could be, like I said about the chickadees, this would be exactly the same thing. It'd be, be a really interesting study to do, um, to study a pack that had these different personalities. Because it could be that you've got

• 1:09:42Speaker 07

  kind of an ADHD dog that just wants to, you know, trail, nose in the air. And the other one's like, no, I'm kind of quiet. I've got two dogs, two mutts, and one's, the one's, you know, absolutely will jump on anything. And the other one's slow and, and, and actually learns faster because he doesn't jump on things, you know? He will learn a problem faster. And, and so you could have a slow, deliberate personality that say, you know what? I am gonna specialize in these heavy molecules. Um, and.

• 1:10:13Speaker 05

  And I'm assuming you're gonna tell me that it could be nature or nurture, like it could be passed down through generations in their genes because they succeeded running cold tracks. And then you could also teach that to a dog.

• 1:10:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I think what you've got, you know, probably, um, you've got a, a pack, you know, a litter of puppies. You might have cold, you know, future cold nose, future hot nose in the, in the litter. But then depending on their experience, um, how they're trained, what they're, you know, did they have a really good experience using that strategy, then they're, you know, then what they're gonna do, I mean, what any predator would do is that they keep working on that, you know, they get better and better. And the rich get richer, right? And then, and then another dog, it's like, well, that never worked for me. Or I had one frustrating thing, I, I

• 1:11:07Speaker 07

  lost it. I'm gonna, whereas I, I trail and I pick up, you know, I do this fast sniffing in the air and I'm, that works for me, so I'm gonna do that. Um, but it could be that, um, I mean, interesting to ask your, um, people, like, what else do those dogs vary about? Like, you know, are there, what else are they doing differently?

• 1:11:28Steven Rinella?

  That's interesting.

• 1:11:29Speaker 07

  You know?

• 1:11:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, what other attributes do they have?

• 1:11:31Speaker 07

  Do they, do they rush the gate? Does this one, you know?

• 1:11:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, like, let's say you're like, I seriously, like, you got a cold-nosed and a hot-nosed dog, where you put them all in a situation where they're like a minute behind it. Are they, do they still have different attitudes?

• 1:11:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Steven Rinella?

  Or do they kind of like coalesce around some level of excitement?

• 1:11:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:50Steven Rinella?

  Or is he always like, no, slow and easy, slow and easy?

• 1:11:54Speaker 07

  Or you give them a problem they've never seen before, you know? There's a lot of work now on, you know, problem solving in dogs. And how do they, how do they, um, tackle it? You know, do they, do they have different strategies to ta, to tackle it? I bet, I bet the cold, hot nose is like, is like just a signature of maybe differences in, um, like overall problem-solving strategy. And that's what, that's what you, that's what we talk, when we talk about animal behavioral syndrome or personality, it's like a lifelong way of a track, of attacking a problem, basically.

• 1:12:26Steven Rinella?

  I got a buddy who's got a beagle and his, his dog's like a, his dog's a blood trailer, so it can find a wounded deer.

• 1:12:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:33Steven Rinella?

  And one day we put it on a deer and it knew the path, like a hundred percent.

• 1:12:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:39Steven Rinella?

  Because we knew the path too, because we, we'd lost the blood trail.

• 1:12:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:42Steven Rinella?

  But the dog just lost interest. And he said.

• 1:12:45Speaker 07

  Interesting.

• 1:12:46Steven Rinella?

  He knows he won't find it.

• 1:12:48Speaker 07

  Oh, really?

• 1:12:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So it's like, funny, he's like, he knew where it went, but he's like, he knows he'll never find it.

• 1:12:52Speaker 05

  That was explained to me because I called out a, a, you know, a, a deer tracking dog a few years ago. And the same thing happened. We kind of just ended up doing circles and it was a lot of just, you know, dead ends. And eventually he said, I think that that deer that we're trailing or trying to trail is not wounded enough that it will die because it emits.

• 1:13:15Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:13:16Speaker 05

  From its, through its hooves, it emits a scent that says, I'm wounded, I'm in danger, I'm dying, whatever.

• 1:13:23Speaker 07

  It's got all that.

• 1:13:23Speaker 05

  That's what that blood, that's, that's what the dog's trailing. It's not trailing the blood.

• 1:13:27Speaker 07

  Exactly. It's trailing corticosterone, I mean, I mean, the stress hormones.

• 1:13:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 07

  And actually.

• 1:13:32Steven Rinella?

  That's interesting. The dog's like, he's not hurt.

• 1:13:34Speaker 07

  There was a study in gerbils where they had one gerbil that I think was.

• 1:13:41Speaker 07

  Stressed or killed by a cat or something? And, and, and they, they took blood from a, a gerbil who had been attacked and one who hadn't been attacked. And another gerbil could tell the difference between the two, the blood.

• 1:13:52Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:13:52Speaker 07

  Yeah. So that, I mean, so that, because you've got, you know, you know, you've got stress hormones coming through your blood is coming out. It smells like it. Yeah.

• 1:14:02Speaker 05

  Right. All right. Differences in scent molecules. Like, conditions. Dry ground versus wet, warm versus cold, rising versus steady temps, rough ground versus soft ground. You, you kind of said already, the rougher the ground is, the more scent molecules it traps. Right, or holes.

• 1:14:22Speaker 07

  But, but that's good for, you know, that would be good for tra- tracking, but not for trailing, right? So if tracking is the ground, trailing, I mean, that's how you use it too?

• 1:14:31Steven Rinella?

  I don't know what we're terming.

• 1:14:32Speaker 07

  Okay, I know, but air, air, air versus ground.

• 1:14:35Steven Rinella?

  The dog that keeps his nose in the air and a dog that keeps his nose on the ground.

• 1:14:38Speaker 07

  Right, right. And so.

• 1:14:39Steven Rinella?

  What is the term for that?

• 1:14:41Speaker 07

  I mean, we, the search, the search dog is the world, it's like tra- tracking, tracking nose down. Trailing nose down.

• 1:14:49Steven Rinella?

  We had a guy on that trains apprehension dogs. And he talked about, like.

• 1:14:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:54Steven Rinella?

  The, a dog that goes into a building to find a suspect.

• 1:14:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57Steven Rinella?

  His nose is in there.

• 1:14:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, right.

• 1:14:59Steven Rinella?

  A dog that like, you're like, a guy, a suspect last night ran off into the woods.

• 1:15:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Steven Rinella?

  And now we're wondering where he went.

• 1:15:06Speaker 07

  Right, that's right.

• 1:15:07Steven Rinella?

  That dog's nose is on the ground.

• 1:15:08Speaker 07

  That's exactly it.

• 1:15:09Speaker 05

  And I think it depends on conditions too. I think that at times hounds, sometimes will have their nose down.

• 1:15:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Speaker 05

  If the conditions get right and they don't have to have their nose down there, they can sense when their head is up. They can move faster.

• 1:15:23Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  They will switch to that as long as they're still getting that.

• 1:15:26Speaker 07

  Well, and, and so we did a study of search dogs in California where it's cold and, and wet in the morning. And this is in the East Bay. And then it's hot and dry in the afternoon and then cold and, and damp again in the evening. And so we were using search and rescue dogs, really, really well trained and very carefully controlled. We had like a quarter mile track with a human walking on it and, and, and waited at the end. And, and then we just measured the, um, the location of the dog GPS. And we also developed this thing to measure whether the head up was head up or down. And we, every 10 meters, we, we took a weather station and we measured the wind speed, temperature, blah, blah, blah, blah, everything.

• 1:16:10Speaker 07

  And so, and what we found was it, it basically, they were more accurate when it was cooler and, um, and, and more humid. So that definitely, um, and the reason.

• 1:16:22Speaker 05

  And probably faster too then.

• 1:16:24Speaker 07

  Well, well, so that was interesting. Um, the, what, what we found is that when they started off, if, so we would, um, these are search and rescue. So we, you know, we'd give them a, a sniff of a T-shirt or something. And, um, they take off at first, once they have the scent, um, they know exactly what they're going. They, they start off fast with the trailing, air, in the air. But then if they start losing it, then they slow down, they're still trailing and they slow down. Um, but then if they, um, then they start, you see them circling. So they, after, um, if they slowed, they slowed down and now they're circling like 10, 20 yards away from the trail and they're, they're, and they're, they're still trailing, but they're circling.

• 1:17:09Speaker 07

  Um, then they really lost it. Then they, they, they may move like up to like 40 yards away from the trail. They're circling and they're on their ground, on the ground. So, and what we found is when you had the, like, here was a trail and if there was a big wind coming, the actual, there was a lot of, um, probably these heavy molecules blown down, um, off the trail. Because there was this one place where our, our, the, the track went next to a small hill. There was wind coming down and all the dogs kind of scooped down. So they didn't stay on the trail. They scooped down. Yeah, so like.

• 1:17:46Steven Rinella?

  They were where the smell landed.

• 1:17:48Speaker 07

  They, exactly. They, they, um, and they're so accurate. Um, and, and, um, so, but, but that, so there was like three strategies, you know? And basically, when you know what you, you know exactly where you're going, you're, you're high speed air. And then if you start not sure, you move away from the trail and now you're, you're using air, but you're moving, you know, you're kind of circling, you're, you're away from the trail.

• 1:18:12Speaker 05

  Once they start circling, they've lost it. They're looking to pick it back up.

• 1:18:16Speaker 07

  That's right. That's right. Yeah. And that's exactly what you see in all animals, butterfly, you know, and moss. I mean, all animals that orient to space, humans, we've done this in humans in virtual environments. You know, it's casting, you know, they're trying to find the plume.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:31Speaker 07

  Um, and so, and yeah, and then, but they didn't really do the, the, the head down to the ground unless they were really lost. And, um, and then they're looking for like some big, heavy molecules. But so I think it's, it's like, you know, if you want to go fast, find them, you want, you know, you want to just use air. But then if you lost it, then you have to, okay, you know, you gotta do something slower, harder. But then you say, okay, that is, they were here.

• 1:19:00Speaker 05

  Do you think that can be trained?

• 1:19:02Speaker 07

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, I mean, these search dog, um, people, I worked with, um, Shay Cook and others. I mean, they, they start training their dogs when they're eight weeks old. Um, I mean, they, they, you can't just take any dog and, and, um, I mean, you know, well, search and rescue is a whole training thing.

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Speaker 07

  Um, but I bet, I mean, I think, so I think you've got breed differences, you know, obviously hounds, beagles. I mean, they are all nose, um, but, um, so you, but you've got layers. So you've got the breed, you've got, um, personality, which is going to vary within a litter. Um, then you've got experience, which is training. And then its own experience, um, maybe also, you know, they're going to learn from each other. So like, is there a really experienced dog that is leading the pack? Um, that other, the younger dogs can pick up on?

• 1:19:58Speaker 07

  So all that's gonna, and, you know, complexity, which is probably why you end up with some amazing dogs, you know, that are doing things. Shay had a dog, Zinka, who, um, she was hired to go to an orchard in Southern California to find a, um, and, you know, an invasive pest, insect pest. And this was like five acre orchard and the dog found both the insects. You know, I mean, and, and didn't look, and, and because she trained her on that insect. I mean, that's the other thing.

• 1:20:35Steven Rinella?

  How big's that bug?

• 1:20:37Speaker 07

  Oh, tiny, tiny, you know, like.

• 1:20:39Steven Rinella?

  Not like a big old cockerel or something?

• 1:20:41Speaker 07

  No, no, no, little, a little tiny thing. And, and you were asking about, um, you know, can they learn different things? Well, that, you know, you've got the dog who's only will go for blood or, or go for whatever's coming out of the hooves. I mean, search and rescue, you've got car, you know, you've got cadaver versus live, you know? And, and, I mean, we, you know, we also, um, and you can have six people run out into a field site and the dog is only supposed to find one person and that dog will only go to that one person.

• 1:21:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like that level of detail.

• 1:21:16Speaker 07

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:21:17Speaker 05

  I guess I was more. Go ahead.

• 1:21:19Steven Rinella?

  On that question of, of that there's certain climatic conditions that are good for a dog or any animal smell.

• 1:21:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Steven Rinella?

  And I'm assuming to be saying for like, like, so in general, you say, can, can you hit me again real quick?

• 1:21:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, it's, it's the physics really. So, um, it, it's more humid is better.

• 1:21:38Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:21:38Speaker 07

  Um, and that, it turns out that's because water molecules, um, there's only so many places that an odor can sit on the surface. And when there's a lot of water molecules in the air, they fill up all those places. And so odor molecules stay in the air. That, this is what the physicists have, have, have said. Yeah, it seems like.

• 1:22:02Steven Rinella?

  And is warm better than cold?

• 1:22:03Speaker 07

  And warm is better than cold because warm is more, you've got more air movement. Um, I mean, or molecules move more when, when it's warmer.

• 1:22:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:12Speaker 07

  Um, so you want, but you don't, you, so you want warm and humid. Um, and, and probably a, um, a textured, um, surface, not like, you know, not bare rock. Um.

• 1:22:26Steven Rinella?

  But assuming that like, assuming that through time odors degrade.

• 1:22:30Speaker 07

  Yes, they.

• 1:22:31Steven Rinella?

  Would there ever be a situation, could it be that you went somewhere, a, a dog went somewhere? And it was, and the, the coldest part of the day?

• 1:22:42Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:22:42Steven Rinella?

  So, so there's already an odor laid down.

• 1:22:44Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:22:45Steven Rinella?

  And animals already gone by.

• 1:22:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Steven Rinella?

  You take your dog there, the coldest part of the day.

• 1:22:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50Steven Rinella?

  And it can't do it.

• 1:22:52Speaker 07

  It, it's gonna.

• 1:22:52Steven Rinella?

  Would it ever make sense to you be like, I'm gonna come back when it warms up?

• 1:22:56Speaker 07

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:22:57Steven Rinella?

  And let him take another swing at it. Now the odor is older. But would the climatic conditions ever override the age and somehow activate the odor?

• 1:23:07Speaker 07

  I bet, I know, I bet they would. I bet they would. And, um, and then the other thing is, um, you know, dogs, um, have a really interesting way that they, they activate odors in the ground. So when they, I mean, you know, the dog knows they've got two holes in the front, right? They're bringing odor in. And when they sniff in, they, um, in the back, there's like a little valve that opens up. And that odor gets sucked in that valve and goes right up to this, um, place where like, you know, that collects all the odors and the, um, for detecting. Then that's an inspiration, right? When they're, there's, they're breathing in.

• 1:23:48Speaker 07

  When they breathe out, um, that valve closes and they breathe out through the, um, those slits on the side. And that sends the air to the side and, um, down and backwards. And so when they breathe out, they're not contaminating what they're trying to breathe in with what they're breathing out. Yeah, yeah, this is, Gary Settles did this work, is amazing, amazing work. Um, and, um, it's even more amazing is that he showed, he studies aerodynamics, that, um, when they, they jet air out of the slits of the nose, it, it becomes turbulent.

• 1:24:29Speaker 07

  And it actually creates a little turbulent field, like this is when the dog's nose is close to the ground. And that turbulent field moves forward and sucks air from in front of the nose into the, towards the nose. So when they breathe out, so it's like this incredible feedback where the, the dog, as he's breathing out, he's also um, making the odors ahead of him come towards him.

• 1:24:56Steven Rinella?

  God, that's incredible.

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

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• 1:26:28Speaker 05

  So I think we've kind of covered this, but just, just so that all the hound folks out there know, but like there's someone that lives in Texas and doesn't want dogs that run bobcats, only wants them to run lions.

• 1:26:45Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:46Speaker 05

  And he seems to have successfully done so. And you feel like that's, that should be very easy to do, very trainable.

• 1:26:51Speaker 07

  Absolutely. I mean, that's what the search and rescue people do all the time. I mean, they all, I mean, they will train one dog to do one thing. Or they will train, I mean, I think they're dogs that do more than, like do cadavers and live humans. And, you know, and then there's drug dogs that are only looking for one kind of drug.

• 1:27:08Steven Rinella?

  So it seems like, from what you're saying, it seems like it could be possible not only for it to know a mountain lion from a bobcat, but for it to know that mountain lion from that mountain lion.

• 1:27:18Speaker 07

  Absolutely, absolutely. And, and maybe you could say, train it just to go for female, you know, bobcats. I mean, they, they would be able to do that.

• 1:27:26Steven Rinella?

  They'd know that.

• 1:27:27Speaker 07

  Absolutely. I mean, you, you know, you'd have to, I wouldn't want you to do that. And I don't know how you'd do that, but, but theoretically.

• 1:27:34Steven Rinella?

  But their level of smell would be that, that it could tell the difference.

• 1:27:37Speaker 07

  Right. I mean, it just like, you know, the kangaroo knows that that was a Tasmanian devil that has eaten kangaroo. There's, you know, mice, voles, actually, two males know that that male has eaten in last 12 hours and this one hasn't. So this one is more of a competitor because it's, you know, so I mean, it's just like, it's, there's, it's a massive amount of, there's no privacy in olfaction. Everything that you are comes out through your skin and an animal and their scent marks. And, oh, that's the other thing is scent marks. How do you, how, you know, odors, like when animals, you know, urinate, defecate.

• 1:28:21Speaker 07

  I mean, there's a lot of oils and heavy molecules and those all prevent the odors from evaporating. And so if you're like, if you're marking what you want.

• 1:28:33Speaker 05

  Purposely marking.

• 1:28:34Speaker 07

  On purpose, you want, you know, everyone to know that that's your territory and I marked it. And you don't want it to disappear because you want them to think, I just marked it. Because that means I was just there. And animals are really sensitive to how long an odor has been, was last there.

• 1:28:55Speaker 07

  And in fact, oh, this was a dog result is that if you take a search dog and you bring him in at a right angle to a trail and are they going to turn left or right to follow a human?

• 1:29:06Steven Rinella?

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 1:29:07Speaker 07

  Well, there's two studies of this and where they only need five human footsteps to know which way the human went. And that's just, so you've got a human who lays down a trail like, you know, 20 minutes ago and the dog comes in and three steps isn't enough, five steps is enough. That means that the light volatiles have, you know, have blown off the difference between the first step and the fifth step. I mean.

• 1:29:38Steven Rinella?

  But he can go like weaker, weaker, take five steps, stronger, stronger.

• 1:29:42Speaker 07

  Exactly. And so they know that my prey is going, you know, went left, not right. And so that's the kind of discrimination between, you know, a human that wearing shoes, five steps, that the dog knows that that's the difference. I mean, and that, that was, and they were stepping on carpet. So it wasn't like crushed vegetation or anything. I mean, it was really just the, the steps.

• 1:30:07Speaker 07

  So, so.

• 1:30:08Speaker 05

  And it should be, I mean, if it's doing that with a, with a human in boots, it should be no different with a lion or a bobcat or a bear.

• 1:30:16Speaker 07

  Absolutely. Because they're sweating through their pads. I mean, animals have all these sweat glands in their pads to protect them. So, yeah, I mean, they're just, yeah.

• 1:30:25Speaker 05

  Okay. I know for a fact, I've watched him do it. I can explain all the conditions if you want, but.

• 1:30:32Steven Rinella?

  This is a fact.

• 1:30:33Speaker 05

  The short version of, we're out there together, Mingus and I, my blue tick hound dog, and he's maybe 20 yards down the hill from me and we both kind of come up on a track at the same time. And I go, oh, I think that's a mountain lion track.

• 1:30:48Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:30:49Speaker 05

  Before I really looked closely and he immediately, boop, starts going up. He starts going one direction and does not change directions. It, this track has quite a bit of fresh snow in it from the morning.

• 1:31:02Speaker 07

  Oh, okay.

• 1:31:02Speaker 05

  But it's obviously fresh enough that he's smelling through that fresh snow.

• 1:31:05Speaker 07

  Right, right, right.

• 1:31:06Speaker 05

  I couldn't tell which way it was going until the track went underneath a tree where there was less snow and that could finally see the toes.

• 1:31:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:31:13Speaker 05

  He ran that track backwards, I'm guessing 700 to 1,000 yards.

• 1:31:19Steven Rinella?

  The wrong direction.

• 1:31:20Speaker 05

  The wrong direction. Eventually he turned.

• 1:31:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:31:24Speaker 05

  So is he just?

• 1:31:26Speaker 07

  No, he is, and he's head up, right? He's trailing, he's going for, it's air.

• 1:31:30Speaker 05

  You know, he's.

• 1:31:31Speaker 07

  So he knows that, he sniffs the trail, he knows it's a mountain lion.

• 1:31:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Speaker 07

  There's, I mean, what was the wind that day?

• 1:31:39Speaker 05

  There was probably, it wasn't dead calm.

• 1:31:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was some, something in the middle.

• 1:31:44Steven Rinella?

  This is like a general thing that people sort of know. Is it a beagle can very quickly figure out what way a rabbit went? But a hound can't quickly figure out what way.

• 1:31:59Speaker 07

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:32:00Steven Rinella?

  But, but here's the key difference. A beagle's always working something that happened two minutes ago.

• 1:32:04Speaker 07

  Oh, okay.

• 1:32:05Steven Rinella?

  He's working effectively what happened right now.

• 1:32:08Speaker 07

  And nose down, nose down, right? The beagle, the beagle is doing nose down. So it's working on big molecules that are being left by the body, you know, whereas the, but that's a very slow way to work as opposed to the hound, which is like, I'm going after a mountain lion. That's a big animal moving very fast. I need to use air, right? Because I've got to go far. And so maybe occasionally that's a mountain lion, but now the wind has come in and it's shifted it over like the we've seen with our search dogs, they shift over. And so it's, it's picking up a molecule, you know, a volatile molecule. And the volatile molecules are this way. And then it gets to a point where it's like, you know what? That's, that's the wrong way.

• 1:32:54Speaker 07

  And then it's going to come back.

• 1:32:55Steven Rinella?

  No, but what he means is he's following it like. Like, like, okay, let's say you, let's say a rabbit gets scared. A dog scares it. Or you scare a rabbit.

• 1:33:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:10Steven Rinella?

  And you see, rabbit takes off. And then someone's like, oh, here comes the beagle. So you know what way the rabbit went.

• 1:33:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:17Steven Rinella?

  Here comes the beagle. That beagle is going to almost instantly know what direction of travel.

• 1:33:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:33:24Steven Rinella?

  It's not going to run it backwards.

• 1:33:27Speaker 07

  Right. But that's like the dog, the dog experiment.

• 1:33:29Steven Rinella?

  It's going to go the way it went, but it's like, but that's a minutes old trail. But like, but I think what he's saying, his dog.

• 1:33:38Steven Rinella?

  Went didn't know the way the lion was going.

• 1:33:41Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:33:42Steven Rinella?

  And he went seven hundred thousand yards in the wrong direction.

• 1:33:45Speaker 07

  Right, complete like one eighty wrong?

• 1:33:48Speaker 05

  Well, he's he's literally following the trail.

• 1:33:50Steven Rinella?

  Backwards.

• 1:33:51Speaker 05

  Backwards.

• 1:33:51Speaker 07

  Oh, he's following it backwards.

• 1:33:53Steven Rinella?

  He's not putting together that it's getting older and older and older.

• 1:33:56Speaker 07

  Oh, that's very cool. Okay, cuz number one is snow. So it's cold, not it's not great conditions. Um, and so.

• 1:34:04Speaker 05

  So any snow is gonna be bad.

• 1:34:06Speaker 07

  Well.

• 1:34:06Speaker 05

  Or harder.

• 1:34:07Speaker 07

  I think harder, definitely harder. Um, so, um, like, I what what do beagles do in the snow, I guess? That that would be, um.

• 1:34:14Steven Rinella?

  But the they're fat, they're fine. But again.

• 1:34:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Steven Rinella?

  He's dealing like just the nature of hunting rabbits with a beagle.

• 1:34:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Steven Rinella?

  Is you're dealing with things that just happened.

• 1:34:24Speaker 07

  Right, right, right. So but.

• 1:34:25Steven Rinella?

  With a hound, like in that situation, you're dealing with things that are hours ago.

• 1:34:30Speaker 07

  Right, but but it do do beagles mostly hunt nose down also? Okay, okay, so that's a completely different. Um, so now your dog needs to hunt. No, it's an old trail. It's gotta hunt nose down. It's gotta go for the heavy things, right? And Hepper, you know, um, again, that that study showed that to do those heavy ones, you can do direction, but you need a certain amount of data to get the direction correct. And so you've got an old trail in the snow, so you've got two strikes against you. And so, um, there's probably enough odor in that trail that it knows that that's a mountain lion, but there's not enough odor. Um, they're not getting the, oh, because the

• 1:35:13Speaker 07

  the volatiles are gone. It's an old trail. So you need the volatiles um, to know, fi- you know, for an old trail, like the beagle probably is getting volatiles too, you know, cuz it's brand, it's just happened.

• 1:35:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:27Speaker 07

  Um, so you've got an old trail, so all it's left are the big, heavy molecules. The the the volatiles that.

• 1:35:34Speaker 05

  Can you just just define and explain the volatiles versus the other?

• 1:35:38Speaker 07

  Okay, just little things that, um, um, that evaporate into the air, little molecules. You know, it's like if, um, if I'm sure you know all this, in perfume, um, people talk of, I'm just joking, but but if you wear perfume, there are base notes and there's top notes. And when you put perfume on your skin, the first thing you smell is a top note. And it's the it's the small molecules that come off first. And then then an hour later, then it's a it's a different perfume. It smells on your skin, it smells, it's a base note. Cuz that's now you're now the top notes are burnt off and now you're getting the base notes.

• 1:36:14Steven Rinella?

  Volatiles are gone.

• 1:36:15Speaker 07

  Right, and so so you've got so perfume, people, you know, they know top notes, middle notes, base, it's the same thing. And so you're basically, um, an old trail, the top notes are gone. They've all evaporated, you know, before. And so what's left is enough, you know, to know that that's a mountain lion. And this is a this is a fairly, I mean, if that was a um, a a month old trail in the snow, your dog might not even, I mean, the dog still might know it's a mountain lion, but it's like that trail is so old, I'm not gonna bother. Yeah, I'm I'm never gonna, some of it's a dog saying, I'm gonna, you know, it's not, it's not worth my time. But your dog going, doing a one eighty

• 1:36:58Speaker 07

  means that it's missing those little molecules that come off early that tell it. Because that's like literally think about the difference between the step one and step five. That is like.

• 1:37:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Speaker 07

  One second, I mean, difference, and that's how old, and so it's.

• 1:37:16Steven Rinella?

  But that's helpful with the rapidly dissipating thing.

• 1:37:19Speaker 07

  Right, exactly. And so.

• 1:37:20Steven Rinella?

  Because these same dogs, if they're chasing a raccoon, they know the way the raccoon went, but that's all new stuff.

• 1:37:27Speaker 07

  Right, new, new.

• 1:37:28Steven Rinella?

  They're talk, that's tonight. They're like.

• 1:37:30Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:37:30Steven Rinella?

  They're at midnight, they're at midnight, they're talking about what happened at eleven P M.

• 1:37:37Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:37:38Steven Rinella?

  His dog at eight A M. is maybe talking about what happened at one A M.

• 1:37:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:44Speaker 05

  Or it could even be eight P M. the day before, you don't know.

• 1:37:47Speaker 07

  Exactly, or even even, you know, if it's important, I mean, if you've got a buck, you know, chasing a a doe, I bet there could be, you know, um.

• 1:37:57Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:37:58Speaker 07

  Even longer. In fact, squirrels, they know not only they smell and, um, they smell the, um, a female at her, like, these are ground squirrels, they males come up and they smell a female. And they know that she's like three days away from being receptive.

• 1:38:13Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:38:14Speaker 07

  And they come back three days later.

• 1:38:16Steven Rinella?

  You kidding me?

• 1:38:16Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:38:17Speaker 05

  So certainly a a buck deer would do that with a female deer too.

• 1:38:21Speaker 07

  Totally. It's like, she's not ready yet. Yeah, yeah. Um, and they.

• 1:38:26Steven Rinella?

  But I could tell you where I'll be on Tuesday.

• 1:38:28Speaker 07

  Yes, exactly, exactly.

• 1:38:31Speaker 05

  So let's talk about.

• 1:38:32Speaker 07

  So it's ti- time is, that's the one thing.

• 1:38:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:35Speaker 07

  That I I do, I really think of odor as space and time. Cuz every time you put an odor down, it starts a time, it starts a stopwatch.

• 1:38:43Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:38:43Speaker 07

  And anyone smelling it knows when they were there. Yeah.

• 1:38:48Speaker 05

  So let's talk about that, like, conditions that either preserve or degrade the sense that these dogs or whoever is is trying to follow.

• 1:38:57Speaker 07

  Well, you know, that's why cats cover their, you know, animals cover their poops and, I mean, cover their scats and things like that, or why you've got, um, you know, bears, you know, reaching really high up and and, um, marking trees, um, cuz they've got scent glands. Um, I'm sure they've got must have scent glands in their in their paws, and so they're leaving individual signature. They're also telling another bear that I am that tall. You know, because you can't fake it. They don't have little step stools, um. You know, why dogs pee as high up as they can, um, into into like texture surface? So that's gonna stay longer, anything, you know, textured, um, but

• 1:39:42Speaker 07

  animals really care about how long scent lasts. Um, mice, males have something called a mouse urinary protein, and it's this massive protein that only males, males produce enormous quantity, and it, um, all the only function is is to make the, um, the volatiles not evaporate so quickly. So and they're because they're competing. I mean, it's just like coyotes or wolves or anything that's scent marking territorial, mice are very territorial, and so they're marking their territory. And they want, um, so another male coming in says, oh, that male was just there. He's, you know, he's defending this space. I'll back off.

• 1:40:21Steven Rinella?

  A cat scratching, if it if it if it.

• 1:40:26Speaker 07

  That should be doing this, yeah.

• 1:40:28Steven Rinella?

  Covering its own scat or covering its own urine is, you think it's like he's trying to get it to stick around.

• 1:40:33Speaker 07

  Stick around.

• 1:40:33Steven Rinella?

  Not trying to destroy it.

• 1:40:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:40:35Steven Rinella?

  He's trying to get it from di- from dissipating.

• 1:40:37Speaker 07

  I think so. I mean, I'm not sure, I'm not totally sure about that. That could be, that could also be trying to, you know, cats are small, reducing scent so that predators don't know you're around.

• 1:40:48Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:48Speaker 07

  Also, um, that that's a possibility.

• 1:40:51Steven Rinella?

  You know, they make marks, like, like.

• 1:40:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Steven Rinella?

  They, um, they make visual marks.

• 1:40:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that and that's, you know, but you've got like mountain lions will, you know, bury prey. That's like other animals don't find it, um, and, uh, hyenas cache bones in water holes so that they absolutely no one can smell it.

• 1:41:14Steven Rinella?

  Definitely trying to hide stuff.

• 1:41:15Speaker 07

  That's definitely trying to hide it, yeah. But but a lot of, um, but you know, you can see scent scat piles by coyotes or wolves. I mean, they're, they just keep marking the same place. I mean, this is like really obvious, visual, you know, I am here, I was just here. I mean, this has been studied a lot. It's, um, in in in, they've studied hamsters that they also do something called counter marking. So one animal will mark and then the other one comes and marks over it. And, um.

• 1:41:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:47Speaker 07

  And, um, they did this study where instead of having two animals mark, they painted with a paintbrush, um, a broken line and then a s- and then a solid line. So from two different hamsters. And so it looked like the the the solid line had come after the the broken line, but they had actually been done at the same time. It was but the geometry of the mark. Would have suggested that one of them was later and therefore dominant. And then when they set those two males up as contestants, they they treated.

• 1:42:28Speaker 07

  They treated that male as dominant, even though it the whole thing had been um set up by the experimenters.

• 1:42:35Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:42:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. So that means so so when you know, when you see scat piles. They probably coyotes and and while they're probably know they know who's done it, when they did it, who did it let? You know, I mean, there's just this all this.

• 1:42:52Steven Rinella?

  Sequencing of it.

• 1:42:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, there's just it's like the um it's like the internet. It never goes away. It's all there. They smell it. I mean, I think I think dogs probably learn to ignore something that's not going to pay off. I mean, that's, you know, it's not. So the question is, do they they smell it? Or is it um or is it they don't think it's worth it? And to do that, you need to bring them into the, you know, into like a an experiment where you you collect these scent samples and you say, can you tell me which one, you know, is is this a mountain lion? Or which one's older? You should, you know, you ask them which one's older. They should be able to, you know, tell you that. And, you know, press a lever for the older one.

• 1:43:37Speaker 07

  And so, I mean, that's the kinds of the those are the kinds of experiments you could do with dogs to find out. Because I bet they know a lot more than we we know.

• 1:43:45Speaker 05

  In the case of like holding scent in these conditions that might prolong scent being there or get rid of it. Like is there you you said, obviously, textures are good because it's just like little nooks and crannies. I'm guessing for these heavier molecules to sit in and and get held. Is there something that where snow in some form? Because it's, you know, you're almost pressing it into a medium that it would hold scent molecules or? Because there again, there are times where I can clearly see that it's mountain lion track, but my dog is not interested. And it's like you it's visually there, but somehow the scent has literally.

• 1:44:21Speaker 07

  Well, it's also.

• 1:44:22Speaker 05

  Disappeared from it.

• 1:44:23Speaker 07

  I mean, it's also cold. It's wet, but it's cold.

• 1:44:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:27Speaker 07

  And that's the and cold is um it it makes it harder to the molecules literally. It's, you know, brownie in motion. The molecules are not moving. And so they're just like um they're they're not getting it.

• 1:44:39Speaker 05

  Molecules moving to be able to.

• 1:44:41Speaker 07

  See, because they've got to. Yeah, they got to get it in their nose. And if it's all, I mean, so normally, you know, if they're smelling close to the ground. The molecules are, you know, they're kind of dancing above the ground and they're they're able to smell them and they sniff them and they're sucking up the air. And they're sniff sniffing them in.

• 1:45:01Speaker 05

  So it's literally the air next to said surface, not the surface itself.

• 1:45:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, right, because the surface they're trying to get they can't smell the surface. They have to smell things in the air. And so they they're, you know, they they're going sniff, sniff, sniff. And then, of course, when they're expiring, they're they're setting up these little they're agitating it. So they're they're bringing up um anything that's on the ground. They're bringing it up into air and then they can suck it in. And find out what it is. But um they, I mean, so the same thing when they're um there might be a, you know, a hard surface or clothing or something. And um to smell it, they still need those molecules to be in the air.

• 1:45:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, they can't you they can't stuff a piece of cloth in their nose and say that's what it is. It has to be something. It's got to come off the surface into air into to get into their nose. So if it's cold, I think molecules are just not going to be moving as much. Their nose isn't probably going to be working as well. I I mean, I imagine if you um if you if you if you took like a hand warmer and put it on the on this on the on the footprint and heated it up, that way that would be interesting. I wonder if that would help.

• 1:46:26Steven Rinella?

  It might excite some activity there for some.

• 1:46:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:28Steven Rinella?

  Let me ask you this a series of quick questions like. So just like what one's better? Like if if as a as a surface for an animal to detect odor on, okay? So like gym floor, gravel driveway.

• 1:46:44Speaker 07

  Um, I'd say um.

• 1:46:48Speaker 07

  Well, for detection, um, the same temperature, the same wind and everything.

• 1:46:55Steven Rinella?

  Everything the same.

• 1:46:56Speaker 07

  I think actually the gym floor, because things are not going to stick to it. So they're going to be more they're going to, you know, the same wind is going to pick things off the gym floor. But if you want to know 24 hours later where where there might be a cold trail, then I would say the gravel. Because it would have gone down into the the crevices and it would there there would still be stuff there. I guess actually, so that would be, I would say the if what are you going for? You're going for the heavy molecules or the light molecules?

• 1:47:24Steven Rinella?

  Nah, just I didn't think it through that far.

• 1:47:26Speaker 07

  I didn't. I mean, I'm just doing this on the fly. But I but I think um, yeah, because um a a smooth surface.

• 1:47:35Speaker 07

  You know, it's a smooth surface. The molecules, volatiles are just going to, you know, blow stay stay aloft.

• 1:47:41Steven Rinella?

  But it won't have the holding power.

• 1:47:43Speaker 07

  It won't have the holding power. Exactly.

• 1:47:44Steven Rinella?

  Let me I want to do one more.

• 1:47:45Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:47:48Steven Rinella?

  A rock hard frozen lake. Just pure, flat, clear ice.

• 1:47:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Steven Rinella?

  Or a lake with an inch of snow. Frozen lake, inch of snow.

• 1:47:59Speaker 07

  I think an inch of snow um would um. I mean, if one thing a frozen lake is going to have, it's going to be it's cold, it's probably going to be windy. Everything's going to get blown off. And whereas it the snow has some texture to it, so it can it can hold on to stuff.

• 1:48:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:16Speaker 07

  And snow is actually going to keep things warmer, because, you know, it's slightly warmer under snow, maybe.

• 1:48:22Steven Rinella?

  Got it. Can I do one more?

• 1:48:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:48:25Steven Rinella?

  Smooth granite surface.

• 1:48:29Steven Rinella?

  Inch of snow. Like smooth granite, dry surface or here.

• 1:48:33Speaker 07

  Right, right, right.

• 1:48:34Steven Rinella?

  A granite surface with an inch of snow.

• 1:48:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, I um. Again, I think it would be um.

• 1:48:44Speaker 07

  If you've got an animal that's moved fast over the smooth granite and you're right on top of that animal. Then there that granite is going to lift. There's going to be a lot of volatiles in the air. And so that that a dog with his nose up in the air is going to do would is going to have a lot of information.

• 1:49:04Speaker 07

  But if it's a little older, then the snow is maybe is going to hold some of those large molecules.

• 1:49:11Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:49:11Speaker 07

  And I I I'm not a hunter and I'm completely be completely wrong about all this, but that's my.

• 1:49:16Steven Rinella?

  No, this isn't hunting questions. This is smelling questions.

• 1:49:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the I think what Steve is getting at a little bit, I I think it must have been in here somewhere, is that the dry ground versus a wet ground or what would be like called like a snow type hunt.

• 1:49:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you'll there's a debate. There's a debate here that you'll think is interesting.

• 1:49:36Speaker 05

  In Arizona and and the southwest, the hounds are constantly having to work in dry conditions.

• 1:49:44Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:49:44Speaker 05

  No snow.

• 1:49:45Speaker 07

  Right, right, right.

• 1:49:46Speaker 05

  The northern tier of the Rockies, we're always running as tracks in the snow. I think it's a common belief that the dry ground hounds have it harder.

• 1:49:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, because it's, I mean, when all else fails, humidity. You know, I mean, so you've got it hot and dry. That's the that's what our dogs, they were the worst hot and dry, and they're better when it's cold and humid. Now, we weren't working in snow, but um maybe that's the same thing.

• 1:50:18Steven Rinella?

  Well, you're talk but you're talking about the snow's ability, because this is cold. This is old stuff, old information.

• 1:50:25Speaker 07

  Right, right.

• 1:50:26Steven Rinella?

  The snow's ability to hang on to some old information.

• 1:50:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and and snow does, I mean, that's why animals burrow in snow. I mean, it's warmer. You're warmer on in the snow than you are exposed. So, yeah.

• 1:50:39Speaker 05

  I know this has been really interesting because I think you're you are um, you know, you're clearing it up. But I think for reasons that maybe a lot of hound hunters hadn't thought about. Right? That it's really about what's going on above the surface, not so much on the surface.

• 1:50:56Speaker 07

  That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's interesting. Yeah.

• 1:51:00Steven Rinella?

  Smelling.

• 1:51:03Steven Rinella?

  Like, just like definitionally, it has to be something that is in the air.

• 1:51:08Speaker 07

  Right, right, right. Unless using the vomer nasal system.

• 1:51:12Steven Rinella?

  Unless they're tasting this.

• 1:51:13Speaker 07

  They're tasting it, which is when licking it. Right, exactly. Yeah.

• 1:51:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. Do you feel like when they're panting? So when they're working real hard, what's that? What's how's that affecting their ability?

• 1:51:24Speaker 07

  Their smell. They can't sniff and pant at the same time.

• 1:51:27Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:51:27Speaker 07

  Yes, that definitely the there's um.

• 1:51:30Speaker 05

  What?

• 1:51:30Speaker 07

  Yes, no, because, you know, you you've um you you can't bring you bring air into that's just going straight into your lungs. You've got to bring it, you know, past the olfactory epithelium. You're not sn you're not panting through your nose. You're panting through your um your, you know, your mouth. Yeah.

• 1:51:48Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I got to hit you with one about this whole dry ground humidity deal. So my buddy Kevin Murphy, he's a he's he likes to run rabbits with his beagles.

• 1:51:59Steven Rinella?

  He lives in Kentucky. He runs rabbits all over hell all the time. We took his beagles out to New Mexico, like in the flat out desert.

• 1:52:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:52:08Steven Rinella?

  And put them on jackrabbits.

• 1:52:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:52:10Steven Rinella?

  And also also cotton till. So same rap, also cotton till.

• 1:52:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:14Steven Rinella?

  They couldn't do it.

• 1:52:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I believe it. Oh, that's.

• 1:52:17Steven Rinella?

  And in his mind, he's like, they're not used to hot and dry.

• 1:52:20Speaker 07

  Well, no, I mean, the hot and dry is harder, period. And plus, um, though these, I mean, I mean, if we're thinking beagles or nose down, heavy molecule crackers.

• 1:52:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:33Speaker 07

  But still, um, um, it's just not good. Yeah, um, they're going to they they they're using brand new. And so they're they're going to lost all their vol volatiles they're used to. I mean, they're, you know, they're spoiled. They're in Kentucky. It's incredibly hot and humid. They've got it's like a perfect olfactory, you know, situation. And then it's just like, I mean, probably if you if you kept those beagles in Arizona for a year and they they would learn. Um, but but you just bring them out there and they're going, what? There's no information here. This is I can't do this. Yeah.

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• 1:53:30Steven Rinella?

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

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• 1:54:41Speaker 05

  There's people trying to figure out deer, you know, and they make synthetic scents.

• 1:54:46Speaker 07

  Oh, huh.

• 1:54:48Speaker 05

  That are meant to, you know, be like, not only is it a scent coming off the face of a deer, but it's, this is specifically mimics the forehead gland, or specifically mimics the the orbital, or

• 1:54:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:54:59Speaker 05

  glands that are, you know, where they pee on them, on their hocks.

• 1:55:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, right, right, right, right.

• 1:55:05Speaker 05

  So, again, just in your experience in messing around with scents, like, is it possible for us to just, to make a synthetic scent that could, that could fool a deer's nose and brain?

• 1:55:17Speaker 07

  Um, so, um, no, because hamsters have like the same thing. They've got like four different scent glands. And they, um, and so the lab work, and this is, I'm sure, drew for deer, that they recognize individuals by all these different, you know, but they know that that's the anal gland, and that's the chest gland, and that, but they also know it's that individual. So, it's a really complicated signal. And, you know, you've got a deer with five different scent glands. Everyone smells different. It's not, you know, they're all different. They're different for that. They, they identify that individual. And now you're bringing something, some generic thing,

• 1:55:58Speaker 07

  you know, um, that is, um, generic hawk odor, that, um, or maybe, you know, it was, it was synthesized for a deer in Wisconsin, but you're actually hunting in a completely, a completely different population. Um, probably, they smell differently. Like, they're going like, who the hell is that? I, I don't know who that is. I, I mean, I've never, or, that's not even my neighborhood. That's not even my state, you know? I mean, sure, if they came to Wisconsin and they synthesized, you know, your five glands for each one of your deer. Even so, I think it'd be very confusing

• 1:56:41Speaker 07

  for the deer to know, um, like, who the hell, who is that? I mean, that's a weird robot deer. You know, I mean, that doesn't make any sense. It's like, if you showed up wearing a Halloween mask, um, you know, it's, it's equivalent of you, of you wearing, of, of doing something very weird. They recognize that it's deer, and they recognize that it's a scent, but they don't understand what it means.

• 1:57:08Speaker 05

  You're like a stranger walking into your house, and your kid's like, oh, it's just a person.

• 1:57:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:57:12Speaker 05

  Doesn't matter.

• 1:57:13Speaker 07

  Exactly. Sure, come, you know, sure, have dinner with us. Yeah, it's like, no, no, no. That's exact, that's exactly right. Yeah. So, I think that they're underestimating the deer's, um, intelligence. And, um, and also, the other thing is that it might be that, um, you know, I mean, in some populations, I, how do, how are deers using these glands? You know, is that something that they're marking out territories, or is it aggressive? Or, um, you know, it's just, it's, it's kind of like, it's a deer language. And you're coming in with a big sign that says, you know, one thing, and the deer's going,

• 1:57:55Speaker 07

  what, what are you saying? I don't, you know, they're just, it's confusing.

• 1:57:59Speaker 05

  Well, some of these manufacturers will claim that, hey, you don't use this one during these dates. This one is specifically meant from October 15th to November 1, when the duck, when the bucks are gonna be specifically going to the scrapes, marking them in a very territorial fashion.

• 1:58:14Speaker 07

  Right, right, right.

• 1:58:15Speaker 05

  And you wanna basically introduce a stranger, so that that buck's like, man, I don't know who's been hitting my scrape, but I need to come back here and keep putting my scent back on top of it.

• 1:58:25Speaker 07

  That's, that's, that, that makes complete sense. You're, because they're marking, and then, then they're counter-marking. That's right. So, that's exactly what the hamster stuff.

• 1:58:33Speaker 05

  But you feel like we could fool that buck enough to make him think that someone else is counter-marking, so I need to come back and counter-mark it?

• 1:58:39Speaker 07

  I mean, the thing is, if you, if you give them an animal something that's really, really important, like, um, and to a buck, whether I'm gonna

• 1:58:49Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:58:49Speaker 07

  reproduce, that is everything. Like, it doesn't, I could, you know, it doesn't matter if I live or die. If I don't reproduce, who cares? So, so that's life or death for a buck. So, that would be, this is weird, but I'm gonna do it. Um, it's kind of like when I was trapping squirrels, and, um, to, you know, for behavior, and, you know, when, in the middle of the summer, you can trap any squirrel as much as you want, but as soon as the, you know, the oaks start ripening again, the squirrels are going, I'm not going in that trap. I know it's a trap. It's a trade-off. I'm like, I know it's a trap. I know it's, I'm, you know, it's, it could be bad, but I'm really hungry, and I'm gonna go for it. And, and two weeks later, it's like, the same squirrel. And then, you know.

• 1:59:33Speaker 05

  Oh, because, because they know at that point they have enough food.

• 1:59:36Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:59:37Steven Rinella?

  You know, you know what's crazy about that? So, we got a buddy, and we got a buddy in, in, uh, Arkansas, and they'll put out bait piles for bears. And in the summer, you might have 17, 18 bears on a bait pile. The minute the acorns hit.

• 1:59:50Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:59:51Steven Rinella?

  They're gone.

• 1:59:52Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:59:53Steven Rinella?

  And it's like, well, it can't be easier than a bait pile.

• 1:59:55Speaker 07

  No, no, but.

• 1:59:56Steven Rinella?

  But in their head, it's like, no, it's not easier than bait piles. It's less risky than a bait pile.

• 1:59:59Speaker 07

  It's let, well, um, well, it's also, you know, it's also not, um, it's not as good. I mean, acorns are really, um, highly nutritious. And I thi, I think that's, actually, because the same thing with squirrels, you know, they, they, um, I mean, they, they evolved to eat acorns. And acorns are full of kinds of micro nutrients that bait, that there's no way, I can't, I can't, you know, walnuts and peanuts and stuff like that.

• 2:00:24Steven Rinella?

  When he's on bait.

• 2:00:24Speaker 07

  Exactly. I mean, hungry and slumming it. I think that's right. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:28Steven Rinella?

  I, I got one for you about canines. And this is, um, so, in, in like, in the, in the outdoorsman world, okay, there's this, there's this long-running debate. If you went back, if you went back to 1980, right, in 1980, there was an idea that you could, that a fox trapper, or a coyote trapper, could wear rubber boots and slash, wear rubber boots, slash around in the mud puddle, wear rubber gloves and wash them, okay? That you could go and like, set a trap, and have it be that the fox or the coyote would never, would not know that a human was there.

• 2:01:13Steven Rinella?

  You could make it that, that he was never there. Since 1980, the understanding has evolved to now where there's guys that don't even wear rubber gloves. Because in their mind, they're like, there's nothing you can do.

• 2:01:28Speaker 07

  I think that's right.

• 2:01:28Steven Rinella?

  They always know you're there.

• 2:01:30Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:30Steven Rinella?

  You can play games.

• 2:01:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:33Steven Rinella?

  It knows you're there.

• 2:01:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean.

• 2:01:34Steven Rinella?

  You're, you're, you're tricking yourself to think that it doesn't, it's like, it knows you're there.

• 2:01:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, our, we are dropping dead skin cells, like thousands, all day long, you know, and our, you know, you've got these skin cells that, um, are covered with bacteria, and the bacteria are decomposing, and that makes your own, your own particular odor. I mean, you're just leaving a stream of, of heavy, you know, pieces of tissue around you. So, you're walking through the woods, you're just dropping trails. So, it's not just your feet. It's like, you're just dropping in from, you know, that information. And again, if you're a, it's, you know, dinner or my life, and so, so an animal who thinks you're, you know, you're a predator, they just need one little whiff of that, and they know you're there.

• 2:02:23Steven Rinella?

  That you would hide, like, and this is like, not old, this is like yesterday. You think, I'm saying, when I mean that, I mean, that you think the idea that, that 24 hours later, that you could hang out in a place for a minute, hovering around a place for a minute, that 24 hours later, in your mind, it doesn't matter what you got on your hands.

• 2:02:42Speaker 07

  I think, I think.

• 2:02:43Steven Rinella?

  It's like, there was a dude here.

• 2:02:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, um, you know, unless you did all this masking and all this kind of, but just your, yourself with, with gloves, without gloves, I think they would still know. Yeah.

• 2:02:56Speaker 05

  Well, this masking that you speak of, that's what we're interested in.

• 2:02:59Speaker 07

  I know, I know, I know. Well, so then, but I don't know, I mean, again, you know, animals, um, it's like, actually, I've got, um, you know, mice in my car, and so, um, what really works are these, these rodent, you know, smelly packets, you know, you get these herbal packets.

• 2:03:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:03:16Speaker 07

  And they, they, you know, you put them, and, and, and I thought that, I was just realizing, I was putting them in yesterday, because I just.

• 2:03:23Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you have mice vandalizing your car?

• 2:03:25Speaker 07

  Yes, yes, yeah. I just, and yesterday, like, before I, I flew out here, I turned on the, um, you know, the air vents, and all this mouse bedding's blowing out. It's like, I got mice back in the car.

• 2:03:35Steven Rinella?

  You live on a farm.

• 2:03:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. And I, and we've got the mice, you know, uh, deer mice all, all over the place. And, um, and I realized, no, no, no, it isn't that they don't like the smell of this fragrant thing. It's not, it's that it masks their own odor, that they can't, um, that it confuses them. If they're, we're moving around this dark car, using a lot of odor, and I've got all these big, stinky packets

• 2:04:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:02Speaker 07

  that people buy for their cars and their trucks and everything, is like, it's just, it's disorienting. It's like having wind. So, I think.

• 2:04:11Speaker 05

  And again, it's like a blind spot, like you said before. It's like that odor blind spot, and they don't like that.

• 2:04:15Steven Rinella?

  But, but that's, but what you're saying is an interesting point about this issue, is like, in, in, in our minds, okay, when I say ours, I mean collectively, like, people that are trying to trick animals. In your mind, you're creating an atmosphere that he'll be comfortable being in, but just won't be able to tell what's going on. And you're saying you might be creating an atmosphere where they don't want to be in it.

• 2:04:38Speaker 07

  Right, right, right, because you-

• 2:04:40Steven Rinella?

  It's like you're creating a confusing space.

• 2:04:41Speaker 07

  Information is, is safety, right? I mean, you, you, you wouldn't want to be in a space that you didn't know where anything was. I mean, that's very dangerous. I mean, animals, number one, where am I? That they, they, they use vision, olfaction. I mean, they use everything they can. And, and then there's home court advantage. You know, animals are safer in spaces where they know. They have escape routes, you know? They know where the predators are. They know who the predators are. All that stuff is very important. So you come in and you do, make it chaos. I don't, you know, it's, I'd-

• 2:05:18Steven Rinella?

  But I want to tell you a story, though.

• 2:05:19Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:05:19Steven Rinella?

  It's kind of what you're talking about, in a way, but with humans. So my buddy, my buddy, I have a buddy in Hawaii, Danny Bolton, and they have a, they have a coffee plantation, like a family property. And he's got all these bananas, banana trees.

• 2:05:35Steven Rinella?

  I think at one point in time, they were like cultivated intentionally, but now it's just like scattered banana trees. And I was out there with my kids and they're trying to find a, like a bundle of like ripe bananas, which you can't find because everybody's always in there getting the bananas. He says, though, if you really want to find ripe bananas, you gotta go. They have this pile where they make their own fish-based fertilizer. So they have a place where they're really like, they're rotting down fish carcasses.

• 2:06:04Steven Rinella?

  He says, I guarantee you'll find ripe bananas there.

• 2:06:09Steven Rinella?

  Because no one wants to go there. So you, you go down to the rotten fish pot and it's ripe bananas all over the place. Because it's like, he just finds over the years that people are like, they hit that wall of stench and they, and they go look for bananas somewhere else.

• 2:06:26Speaker 07

  That, I tell you, that's-

• 2:06:28Steven Rinella?

  And it worked, there's like ripe bananas.

• 2:06:30Speaker 07

  You know, that's animal behavior. That's perfect animal behavior. That's exactly how, that's exactly how you should think about deer, deer in the woods. Yeah.

• 2:06:38Speaker 05

  I think we'll be remiss if we have a gray squirrel expert here and we don't hit on, like, you gotta tell us like, what's cool about gray squirrels and their noses? And I don't know if we want to talk about caching-

• 2:06:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, tell us the best thing we don't know about gray squirrels.

• 2:06:53Speaker 07

  Okay, well, I mean, I, um, so my PhD thesis, they remember where they bury their, their nuts. And recent work we did, um, on, um, in, in California, was that squirrels, when they bury nuts, we gave them a random series of nuts of different species. They organized them by species. So that they would move, so that the walnuts are here, almonds are there, hazelnuts are there.

• 2:07:23Speaker 05

  Like you give them a pile and there'd be three of each?

• 2:07:26Speaker 07

  No, no, we give them one at a time so that they didn't know what was coming next. So they all of a sudden, we give them a walnut and they carry the walnut that far. We've actually also showed in an earlier study that they measure the weight of the nut by shaking it. So if you watch a squirrel, give a squirrel a nut, put it in, the nut in the mouth, they go like that. And that's just like if you had something really light and you wonder how heavy is it, you do that. And so it's force equals mass times acceleration, it's Isaac Newton. We, I got to, you know, I get to say that, it's true. But they measure it and then depending how heavy the nut is, they carry it farther away from the source tree where all the other squirrels are.

• 2:08:11Speaker 07

  You don't, you want to get it far away and cache it so that other squirrels, um, don't find your cache. So the bigger the nut, the farther they cache it.

• 2:08:22Speaker 05

  Because it's more valuable.

• 2:08:23Speaker 07

  It's more valuable. And they, not only that, but then if it's a really valuable nut, they cache them further apart. So that-

• 2:08:32Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 2:08:33Speaker 07

  If one squirrel finds it, then they start looking like this, they don't find the next one. So if you give them-

• 2:08:39Steven Rinella?

  It's like a diversified portfolio.

• 2:08:41Speaker 07

  It's completely, that's exactly the same thing, you know? And so you've got, um, the density of a hazelnut is like this, an almond is like this, and a walnut is like that, you know? And so if you give these squirrel a random series of nuts, you give them a nut, they make, they weigh it, then they go out and cache it and they're caching it in the walnut area. And then they come back and it's the almond. Now they gotta go cache in the almond area. And then they come back and they cache, you know, and every time they go out, they have to remember where the other one was. So they have to keep the, the, um, the density right.

• 2:09:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:22Speaker 07

  And they do that because we're out there marking it.

• 2:09:24Steven Rinella?

  Like, can you, can he keep, how many walnuts can he keep track of?

• 2:09:28Speaker 07

  We don't, we don't, we don't know. They, they cache thousands, probably 3,000 a year of gray squirrel. And, and we know that in the lab, they can remember, you know, they can accurately remember like seven of 10. But I, I, you know, we, no one's figured out yet how to measure how much they remember in the, in the field. The thing is squirrels are actually, they cache in, you know, August, September, and then they're, they're caching in their area, in their home area. And so they are out, they're active all winter. And if you look at a squirrel, November, December, I mean, all winter, they're out there sniffing the ground. And you'll see them sniff the ground, even through snow, and sniff.

• 2:10:11Speaker 07

  And then they'll, um, but if there's like just leaves and they're like checking caches and then they, they, and then they'll put the leaves back on it and they'll go with the next one. And then sometimes they'll dig them up and move them. So they're constantly managing them, you know, all, all winter. So it's, I don't think they actually have to remember them for nine months. I mean, they eat them, they cache them in August, they finish them, you know, April, um, something like that. And so, but they're not, I mean, there are birds that cache them, um, Clark's Nutcrackers, you know, caches pinion seeds in August, September, and then they may not retrieve them until March. And so those really, and in, under deep snow. So those animals, they really are remembering exactly where they are.

• 2:10:54Steven Rinella?

  But a squirrel's constantly fiddling with them and passing over them and re-smelling them.

• 2:10:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they can remember, but they don't have to. I mean, so mammals are, I mean, squirrels are interesting because they've got really good memory, but they, um, they can also smell. Whereas most birds, there's actually, I just saw magpies yesterday, I love magpies. Um, magpies actually have a good sense of smell and they can, um, if you coat a raisin in cod liver oil and bury it, a magpie can find it. There was a study showing that, um, because they, I mean, they're carrion eaters. They're probably, you know, like ravens and magpies, they're probably attracted to smells. But, but squirrels, squirrels can do both. They can smell or they can, yeah. It gets started with squirrels, you know, it'll be another three hours.

• 2:11:42Steven Rinella?

  So I remember, but we had a squirrel expert on one time, years ago.

• 2:11:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:11:46Steven Rinella?

  I can't remember his name.

• 2:11:46Speaker 07

  John, John, was it John Kaprowski?

• 2:11:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. Episode 259, I pulled it up.

• 2:11:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he was doing this stuff. See, I remember-

• 2:11:53Speaker 07

  He's, he's a expert on, on this.

• 2:11:55Steven Rinella?

  I remember reading in headlines, I remember at one point in time, reading in a headline that someone's like squirrels can't, that they, they don't

• 2:12:06Steven Rinella?

  get their own cached nuts any more reliably than somebody else's.

• 2:12:11Speaker 07

  That's what, I mean-

• 2:12:11Steven Rinella?

  That's not true.

• 2:12:12Speaker 07

  Not true. I mean, that, that's, no, I mean, I've been literally studying this since 1981.

• 2:12:17Steven Rinella?

  So they're, they're more likely to go find their own than they are to find somebody else's.

• 2:12:21Speaker 07

  Yes, and, um, and what I saw in, in, I had this like, like 10 yard by five yard, um, arena where I had hand-raised squirrels that were, you know? And what would, I would put in decoys, I, their own caches and then decoys. And if a squirrel came up and there were like two nuts right next to each other, one was his and one was a decoy, if he hit the decoy first, he'd keep going. So I think his, his memory was like, there's one there, but if I find one. So he's not using smell, because he was, and he would go to the one that was like two inches away, but he wasn't. He would just go on to the next one. So like a, a little nut going boom, boom, boom, boom. And I, um, studied the same thing in kangaroo rats and Miriam's kangaroo rats, which are, they horde like squirrels.

• 2:13:07Speaker 07

  And, um, and I found sex differences there. That was interesting. The males were more likely to use, um, odors. They were more likely to find caches that still had seeds in them. And females, um, we had a bunch of landmarks around. And females, as long as the landmarks were there, females were super good at that. And, um, and males, um, didn't use the landmarks as much. And, and they were more likely to use their, their nose. But that's, that's a whole nother area of research I've, I've studied for a lot, is, um, sex differences in landmark use, um, in, in kangaroo rats and, and, and humans. And, you know, male refrigerator blindness, um, I'm sure you've heard of that.

• 2:13:50Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 2:13:52Speaker 07

  This is where, you know, um, the, a man goes to the refrigerator and says, where's the butter?

• 2:13:58Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:13:59Speaker 07

  And opens it up and says, I don't see it, I don't see it. And then, you know, it's actually right, right there. So, I mean, it's just-

• 2:14:05Steven Rinella?

  I call that all three of my kids refrigerator blindness.

• 2:14:08Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 2:14:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, terrible.

• 2:14:11Speaker 07

  Anyway, no, no, no. So you see similar things in kangaroo rats. That's all I'm saying, you know.

• 2:14:16Steven Rinella?

  So you're, uh, when were your, when were your book on squirrels be ready?

• 2:14:20Speaker 07

  So probably, um, I'm, I'm hoping it'll be come out like fall of 27.

• 2:14:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay. And what'll it be called?

• 2:14:26Speaker 07

  Um, it's called The Wealth of Squirrels.

• 2:14:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:14:28Speaker 07

  And, um, it's, um, it's, it's really about, you know, the economics of, um, of hoarding in, in squirrels. And, um, and all, everything I've just been talking about.

• 2:14:39Steven Rinella?

  It'll, it'll be like, is it intended as a popular book?

• 2:14:42Speaker 07

  It's gonna be a popular book.

• 2:14:43Steven Rinella?

  For like Joe Blow, not, not like a, not like an academic title.

• 2:14:47Speaker 07

  Okay, and can, can I, I mean, you know, um, I've never done this before, so I'm a little cautious saying this, but, but that's what, I've got a contract for this book, um, from, um, Harvard University Press.

• 2:14:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:59Speaker 07

  And they've agreed to let me write it as, um, as a story, actually.

• 2:15:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:15:04Speaker 07

  So it's really gonna be a kind of a fictional story that is, so it's, it, it, it really should be a fun, a fun read, but it's gonna be very, you know, dense science. It'll all be based on science. There's, um, no, no humans, just, just squirrels.

• 2:15:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:15:21Speaker 07

  Um, so it, it experiment, we'll see.

• 2:15:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so.

• 2:15:24Speaker 07

  It's, it's gonna, John, I mean, people like, it's gonna get peer reviewed too. So it's gonna, the biology's gonna be, they won't accept it if the biology isn't absolutely right.

• 2:15:33Steven Rinella?

  The wealth of squirrels?

• 2:15:34Speaker 07

  The wealth of squirrels.

• 2:15:35Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so stay, uh, listeners, stay tuned for Dr. Lucia F. Jacobs, The Wealth of Squirrels. And thank you for coming on today and explaining everything about how animals, um, experience their world through smell.

• 2:15:50Speaker 07

  Thank you. This has been, I have learnt huge amount and have really enjoyed this. This has been great. Thank you very much.

• 2:15:57Steven Rinella?

  It was, thank you.

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