The Retriever, Dog, & Wildlife Blog

Posted in golden retriever, Miley | Tagged golden retriever | 5 Comments

5 Responses

1. on February 8, 2013 at 10:18 pm | Reply massugu

   I like seeing the videos of Miley. She reminds me very strongly of my neighbor’s Golden, Lucy, same hue, about the same size (Lucy is 75lbs), same sense of curiosity. Lucy is real love bug too–I suspect that Miley fills that bill as well.

   
   
2. on February 9, 2013 at 8:30 am | Reply Jen Robinson

   I suspect we’d understand dogs better if we had a verb other than ‘smell’ to describe investigations with the Jacobson’s organ. Looks to me like Miley either concluded that the weasels weren’t home, or there was nothing interesting going on.

   
   
   • on February 9, 2013 at 8:36 am | Reply retrieverman

     More likely, she knows if one were to come out, she’d be scared of it.

     
     
3. on February 9, 2013 at 9:15 am | Reply massugu

   My understanding of the Jacobson’s Organ is that it is involved w/ another form of smell, detecting larger molecules that are processed in non-olfactory portions of the brain associated w/ identifying sex pheromones and kinship recognition.

   
   
   • on February 9, 2013 at 5:00 pm | Reply Jen Robinson

     Specifically, aerosols…often larger molecules captured on the surface of a miniscule water droplet. As I understand it, air scenting is mostly smelling, in the same fashion as we smell things. But snuffling and poking the nose right into things is done to take up molecules that don’t vaporize at normal temperatures. This works much better in cool, moist places.
     There’s been a lot of experimental work on pheromone sensing with the Jacobson’s organ, but I doubt they aren’t the only signals it processes. If evolution equipped animals with a sensor, you’d think their brains would evolve to get all the information they can from it.
     I’d give my eye tooth to know what my dogs are picking up when they stick their nose down a hole, or zig zag wildly with their noses touching the ground.

     
     

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