Dogs can sense in a fraction of a second when a person is afraid. You may have already noticed this in practice. Now science knows how they do it – through smell. In an experiment conducted by Italian researchers, three groups of people watched happy, scary, or neutral videos (which did not elicit any emotional response). The scientists then collected sweat samples from the volunteers and took them to 40 dogs (31 Labradors and 9 golden retrievers) to smell.
The sweat of the fearful elicited the same response in the dogs, which were more nervous, distant and had a faster heart rate (other sweat samples from those who had seen the happy or neutral videos did not produce a similar effect). .
Presumably, this happens because when a person is afraid, their body releases special substances that researchers have not yet been able to identify (research generally refers to them as “chemical signals”), but can theoretically be detected by smell. : they love dogs. When you’re scared, dogs notice, and there’s no point in hiding it.