ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2012) —
Animals use their noses to focus their sense of smell, much the same way that
humans focus their eyes, new research at the University of Chicago shows.
A research team studying rats
found that animals adjust their sense of smell through sniffing techniques that
bring scents to receptors in different parts of the nose. The sniffing patterns
changed according to what kind of substance the rats were attempting to detect.
The sense of smell is
particularly important for many animals, as they need it to detect predators
and to search out food. "Dogs, for instance, are quite dependent on their
sense of smell," said study author Leslie Kay, associate professor of psychology
and director of the Institute for Mind & Biology at the University of
Chicago. "But there are many chemicals in the smells they detect, so
detecting the one that might be from a predator or an explosive, for instance,
is a complex process."
Kay was joined in writing the
paper by Daniel Rojas-Líbano, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chile
in Santiago, who received his PhD from UChicago in 2011. Rojas-Líbano, who did
the work as a doctoral scholar, was the first author on the publication. Their
results are published in an article, "Interplay Between Sniffing and
Odorant Properties in the Rat," in the current issue of the Journal
of Neuroscience.
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