Dogs can smell stress on their owners’ breath, study reveals

Our canine friends have proven once again how attuned they are to our feelings — this time, in a scientific sniff test.

Scientists have discovered that dogs can smell stress on our breath and in our sweat.

Four dogs — pets that volunteered through their owners — were trained to “pick” one of three scented containers.

And in more than 650 out of 700 tests, they successfully identified a sweat or breath sample that had been collected from a stressed person.

The researchers, from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, hope the study, published in the scientific journal Plos One, will help train therapy dogs.

Dogs experience their world through their sense of smell. And its highly sensitive abilities are already used to detect drugs, explosives and diseases, including certain cancers, diabetes and even Covid-19.

“We had a lot of evidence that dogs are able to pick up on human scents that are associated with certain medical conditions or diseases — but we don’t have a lot of evidence that dogs can sense differences in our psychological state,” says the study’s lead researcher, Clara Wilson.

The 36 human volunteers reported their stress levels before and after completing a difficult math problem.

Each container contained a sample of your sweat or breath from before or—provided your blood pressure and heart rate had also increased—after.

And if the dogs—Treo, Fingal, Soot, and Winnie—stayed or sat in front of the “stressed” sample, they were rewarded with their favorite treat.

This text was originally published here