Does your four-legged friend seem fascinated by visitors’ private parts? Far from being rude, this attitude actually reveals an essential mode of sensory exchange among our canine friends. Discover the secrets of this little-known olfactory language.
The canine snout: an olfactory supercomputer

For our four-legged friends, smell is more than just a sense—it’s their primary way of communicating with their surroundings. While we humans have around 6 million olfactory receptors, our dogs have nearly 300 million! This colossal difference explains why their understanding of the world is primarily based on smells.
When they sniff another living being, whether human or animal, they are actually interpreting a true chemical biography that is completely imperceptible to us, but which provides them with a wealth of valuable information.