If people had evolved to smell as well as rats, or dogs, if we were constantly exposed to a high fidelity home theater version of the odors around us, I suspect we would have evolved what I consider to be a canine protective medicine. Dogs don't get upset by bad smells, because they love all smells. They have to.
Try this test: Think of a smell dogs don't like. Pretty hard. There are products on the market that claim to contain odors offensive to dogs, but the fact that these products have been developed at all says something. No research and development would be needed to find smells that people don't like.
I think it's obvious that dogs evolved a love of all things smelly to protect them from going crazy. You couldn't live with such an acute sense of smell if you were repelled by garbage. You have to be so enamored of odors of any kind that rolling in a decomposing fish on the beach seems like a great idea.
I don't recall rats being all that offended by places that smell "bad" either.
So I'm happy to settle for a human sense of smell. I won't rail against my limitations. I want to be able to smell a rat, but I don't want to smell like a rat, if you see what I mean.
RAT FACTS
▼ Domesticated rats make ideal pets: they are lively, clean, intelligent and inquisitive
▼ The collective noun for rats is mischief
▼ Rats spend a third of their waking life grooming
▼ As rats are generally nocturnal they can be noisy at night
▼ The average life span of rats is about two years
▼ They have poor eyesight
▼ Adult bucks (males) usually weigh 400g to 700g and does (females) 200g to 500g
Source: www.abc.net.au
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