Elephants Emerge as Champion Scent Detectors

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In addition to its size, strength, and gripping ability, the elephant’s trunk is also a champion among mammals when it comes to detecting scents, writes James Gorman for The New York Times.

Elephants have more smell receptors than even a dog and can sniff out food even when it’s several miles away. This was reaffirmed in recent research that shows how they use their superb sense of smell when choosing food.

Elephants usually have to find water and vegetation at a distance, and also have to distinguish between very similar looking plants by smell alone. Melissa Schmitt, a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, wanted to determine just how good their sense of smell is.

She tested them both at close range and using a giant Y maze with two very similar plants with subtle smell differences, one which they enjoy and one they avoid. In both cases, elephants found the correct plant every time.

According to Schmitt, the elephants are “doing this throughout their entire environment, across multiple spatial scales, for things that don’t smell very strongly.”

Read more about elephants’ sense of smell in The New York Times by clicking here.
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Top photo credit: ラルフ – Ralf RKLFoto Gooood Morning! via photopin (license)

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