Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff Lauren vogel Bomb here with another classic podcast episode. In this one, we delve into the important topic of why some dog ears are so heck and floppy and how it benefits them in the field. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum Here. When two convicts pulled a shawshank redemption in and tunneled out of the Clinton County Correctional Facility and upstate New York, a two year old bloodhound named
Jinny was hot on their trail. Working with James Pedolino from the Rensselaer County, New York Search and Rescue Team, Jinny and a number of other canines used their noses to scour the vast Adirondack region hoping to pick up the escape e scent. Pedolino said of bloodhounds in an interview with an Albany, New York television station, they never make a sound on the trail. All this loose skin
helps hold the scent. Bloodhounds, with their flop skin and gangly ears are the quintessential tracking dogs, and there's good reason. While all types of dogs, including German shepherds and labrador retrievers can sniff out convicts, cadavers, and victims of disasters. The dogs with floppy ears seem to be the best at what they do. For one thing, regardless of breed, dogs have amazing noses, with more than two hundred and
twenty million olfactory receptors. Experts say a dog's sense of smell is thousands of times more sensitive than a humans. In two thousand nine, researchers at Pennsylvania State University created a computer model of canines nose to better understand how dogs smell. They reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface that each nostril pulls in air about five times every second. The dog, it seems, knows which nostril is pulling in the scent, allowing them to turn right
or left when tracking. Moreover, receptors continue to hold onto scent molecules even after the dog exhales. But that being said, dogs with floppy ears, such as bloodhounds, coonhounds, and bassett hounds, are exceedingly good trackers. That's because their long ears act as catchers mits scooping up invisible scent particles on the
trail and sweeping them towards the nose. The scent particles also get trapped in the folds of wrinkly skin on their faces, allowing the dog to carry reference samples as they hunt. Long ears also tamp down a dog's ability to hear far off sounds, forcing the dogs to rely more on their sense of smell. Today's episode is based on the article why decent hounds have long floppy ears on how stuff works dot Com, written by John Paritano.
Greenstuff is production of by Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Or more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.