Air washed birds

[mustistuff]

raining here today, bored and nothing else to do. anyway, above is a subject i find fascination, one, is it a myth or fact, let's hear it. for those of you that are in the dark, the theory goes that a flying bird is washed of its scent and if it lands, however, and doesn't move, it leaves little to no scent and is extremely hard for a dog to locate, the birds that are more easily found are the one's that flop or run, thereby leaving some scent. my experience tells me that something is happening beside sometimes the dogs nose works and sometimes it doesn't especially withing a time span of just many seconds. this is not just a made up question but has been referred to in literature for decades. how can a dog find a bird to begin with, have it shot, see it fall, be just seconds behind the bird and while the bird is there dead, can't seem to smell it.

cheers

 

[BrownDogsCan2]

using my best 6th grade anology and possibly something you can comprehend
give me a ride home after an afternoon of mexican, do you smell me? when I crack the window? what if I hung it out the window at 30 mph?

parts per million.... time and activity. dander man.

Thats my answer

 

[mustistuff]

6th grade

using my best 6th grade anology and possibly something you can comprehend
give me a ride home after an afternoon of mexican, do you smell me? when I crack the window? what if I hung it out the window at 30 mph?

parts per million.... time and activity. dander man.

Thats my answer

some people made it out of the 6th grade and shouldn't have and and some shouldn't have gotten that far

cheers

 

[SetterNut]

I can tell you that quail hunting you see this a lot.
There may be something to the "air wash", but I think a big part of it is that the bird lands and doesn't move much, there is little sent being spread around. Same reason a dead bird seems to give off less scent, and you see a dog with a good nose run right over it.

Least that is my current theory.

 

[FCSpringer]

Myth... Not at all true. What happens most times when a bird does this or goes down hurt is duck in under thick cover and lay flat under it. So the wind drift does not carry his scent. Therefore making it difficult for the dog coming in to use the wind to locate the bird. Dogs with great noses will struggle even some with this situation. But the smart ones with a nose will sort it out. The bird still smells the same. If they run, your dog will have no trouble locating it.

 

[V-John]

Absolutely I believe in Air washing of birds. A bird gives off scent molecules. That is how a dog knows that it is is there, and how it is able to detect where the bird is.
Dogs possess about 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses. These receptors basically line turbinates that screen scent molecules much like a screen or a whale does krill, and the olfactory receptors then turn around and recognize what the scent molecules are and send electric signals to the brain to determine what they are.

Now, the bird itself. The bird gives off scent molecules that the dog is able to recognize. This is how it knows whether to flush, point, retrieve etc etc that particular bird.
The concept of diffusion however tells us that as the wind blows, the scent molecules spread from the source outward. Downwind obviously. This is why when you walk by that pizza joint, or the bakery, it smells so good, the scent molecules are being diffused and sent outward.

Take a quail. A quail can fly around 40 mph. Put any sort of smelly item in a 40 mph wind and the smell will diffuse pretty quickly.
So, as a bird flies, the smell is being diffused very quickly (as it is flying at least 40 mph) and when the bird lands, while it will be giving off scent molecules, it will not have the scent molecules that are on the ground and around it as much as it would if it had been in that space the whole time because they have diffused during flight.

This is why it is harder for dogs scent birds in blistering winds (scent molecules being spread out all over the place) and in a nice breeze, much easier. We all have seen that, right?

Here is a good article on how dog's smell.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html

 

[kansasbrittany]

This extreme form of diffusion might have been why we couldn't find the quail that are "always there" the other day....we even slowed down and walked the place twice b/c we knew the wind was ridiculous and wasn't helping the dogs any.

Thanks for the link, John.

 

[goldenboy]

I have to say the more I am in one place the more animals like deer can smell me. The more a bird stays in one place the more it's scent will scatter around. I don't believe all their scent disappears but enough to sometimes make it difficult for dogs to locate. But at the same time it isn't totally void of scent otherwise my retrievers would never be able to pick up a blind retrieve!

 

[mustistuff]

smell

Absolutely I believe in Air washing of birds. A bird gives off scent molecules. That is how a dog knows that it is is there, and how it is able to detect where the bird is.
Dogs possess about 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses. These receptors basically line turbinates that screen scent molecules much like a screen or a whale does krill, and the olfactory receptors then turn around and recognize what the scent molecules are and send electric signals to the brain to determine what they are.

Now, the bird itself. The bird gives off scent molecules that the dog is able to recognize. This is how it knows whether to flush, point, retrieve etc etc that particular bird.
The concept of diffusion however tells us that as the wind blows, the scent molecules spread from the source outward. Downwind obviously. This is why when you walk by that pizza joint, or the bakery, it smells so good, the scent molecules are being diffused and sent outward.

Take a quail. A quail can fly around 40 mph. Put any sort of smelly item in a 40 mph wind and the smell will diffuse pretty quickly.
So, as a bird flies, the smell is being diffused very quickly (as it is flying at least 40 mph) and when the bird lands, while it will be giving off scent molecules, it will not have the scent molecules that are on the ground and around it as much as it would if it had been in that space the whole time because they have diffused during flight.

This is why it is harder for dogs scent birds in blistering winds (scent molecules being spread out all over the place) and in a nice breeze, much easier. We all have seen that, right?

Here is a good article on how dog's smell.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html

sure glad that someone put some thought into this question besides some off the cuff remark, thanks too you, enjoyed it. one other comment i enjoyed was the thought that maybe breath played a part also, hadn't heard that one before.

cheers

 

[carptom1]

using my best 6th grade anology and possibly something you can comprehend
give me a ride home after an afternoon of mexican, do you smell me? when I crack the window? what if I hung it out the window at 30 mph?

parts per million.... time and activity. dander man.

Thats my answer

What exactly are you hanging out the window