Can Archaeology Dogs Smell Ancient Time? | Hacker News Reader

Can Archaeology Dogs Smell Ancient Time?

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26 pointsVigier13 comments

Without reading the article, I would answer a resounding "yes."

Dogs can be trained to smell _cancer._ That is mind-bogglingly cool.

There are anecdotal reports of doctors/nurses able to pick up certain typical "illness smells" from their patients. Not sure if it's ever been studied more in depth.

Joy Milne has gained some recognition for being able to smell Parkinson's, and that seems to getting some serious attention.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/23/8202745...

On a similar note: in "Prehistorik Road Trip", paleontologist Eileen Grogan remarks that shark fossils have a very characteristic smell. That's a human nose, talking about 323 million year old fossils.

Dogs being able to detect much more recent things does not surprise me at all

[0] https://www.pbs.org/video/welcome-to-fossil-country-mpoq6h/ (around the 18:50 mark)

Still pretty silly that our phones don't have artificial noses on them for at least things like Carbon Monoxide and other easy to detect noxious gases.

I am really glad Apple put an EKG into their Apple Watch without being prompted by competition. Many people have been helped immensely by discovering underlying heart conditions through it.

I have minor heart issues and I can honestly say I feel much, much safer wearing my Apple Watch around than without. It doubles as a medic-alert bracelet! I’m deathly allergic to penicillin, so again; simple things like that are just core parts of my life now.

"I am really glad Google put an EKG into their Apple Watch without being prompted by competition." I'm confused. Which company put what in which product?

Apple I meant, just fixed it. Mind slip, thanks for alerting me.

Right now an artificial nose is kind of a big device, about the size of a microwave oven or bigger. [1]

You could build much smaller devices to detect particular molecules, but even a CO detector is about the size of your thumb. And it would take quite a lot of such devices to even begin to describe a real smell.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mas...

Interestingly, some Apple devices are (inadvertent) helium detectors: https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/31/helium-bricks-iphone-apple-wa...

That’s an interesting story. It sounds like a mass hallucination until you learn the physical reason for the phenomenon.

This makes sense. My dog spends considerably more time sniffing ground from a pavement renewal project nearby. She may be sniffing smells that were left here decades ago !

Also, a few months ago, an article was shared on HN explaining how dogs are able to detect heat with their nose. And this makes sense too: whenever I shower, my dog starts sniffing and scratching walls near the shower stall, where the pipe is.

I bet she could sense a rat hidden inside a wall or in the ground. Predator™.

Or you have a leak! :)

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