Dogs and bears don’t seem to mind their body odor

Today’s question: It is my understanding that a dog’s sense of smell is 10 or more times better than that of a human’s, and that a bear’s nose is 10 or more times better than that. When these critters have a case of body odor, how do they stand smelling themselves? Is that what makes some of them so mean?

Where to begin? Where to begin?

Let’s just jump right in. There have been studies recently that show the human sense of smell is a lot better than previously had been thought and that in some cases we can smell stuff just as well as any old dog.

Still, dogs are pretty good at that sort of thing and bears are even better. According to several rankings, bears have the best sense of smell of any terrestrial animal, about seven times better than that of a dog.

The real problem here is this matter of body odor.

Dogs are supposed to smell like dogs. Bears are supposed to smell like bears. They have no concept of being offended by their own body odors. They’re fine as they are.

And humans are supposed to smell like humans, but over the years we have been conditioned to believe we don’t smell good. Sometimes we really don’t smell so good, but for the most part our body odors are perfectly natural. We just don’t like them.

If you poked around long enough at smithsonianmag.com you would find an article from August 2012 entitled “How Advertisers Convinced Americans They Smelled Bad.”

It’s a pretty interesting piece, but you should still take a shower, OK?