Today we’ve got something different on the agenda—the amazing brains of animals! Did you know that animals have a lot of amazing senses that we humans don’t? Whales and bats, for example, can send sounds out into the water or darkness and use echoes to determine where objects are. Do humans have this amazing ability? Try shouting the next time you are in the dark and see what it tells you. If you are in a cave, you may hear an echo, but otherwise, you’ll probably only learn that you have a really loud voice!

Some animals also have an absolutely amazing sense of smell. Not only can they sniff out drugs and explosives in suitcases, but recently doctors and scientists have discovered that they can smell chemical changes that occur in our bodies if we are ill. No kidding. In one case that was studied, a woman’s dog was always sniffing at her back. When she finally listened to her dog and went to see what all the fuss was about, the doctor told her she had skin cancer, a possibly deadly disease. Her pooch may have saved his owner’s life by using his schnoz! There is also a cat in a nursing home in the US that made world headlines recently.  Just before an elderly person is about pass away, the cat cuddles up with them. Does the cat smell a chemical change too? To find out, scientists will need to keep studying how animals smell scents.

Want to try a cool experiment to see how scents affect humans? Check out Sensational Sensory Organs in the Life Sciences 10 Experiment Booklet. Follow the steps in the second experiment, Your Nose Knows! to find out if our sense of smell affects what things taste like! Click here for details.