ArticleScientific reports2021
Dogs display owner-specific expectations based on olfaction.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- From Control to Clue: Integrating Olfaction into the Object-Choice Task for Domestic Dogs (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- What Makes Canine Search and Rescue Successful? Insights into Environmental, Management, and Personality Factors.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Disconnected Lives: Social Networks and Emotional Regulation in Domestic Dogs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- The behavioral profile of a detection dog is tuned for the dog's role and their environment.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Success in the Natural Detection Task is influenced by only a few factors generally believed to affect dogs' olfactory performance.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The Olfactory Bulb in Companion Animals-Anatomy, Physiology, and Clinical Importance.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Expert considerations and consensus for using dogs to detect human SARS-CoV-2-infections.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- Canine Olfaction: Physiology, Behavior, and Possibilities for Practical Applications.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Most current knowledge about dogs' understanding of, and reacting to, their environment is limited to the visual or auditory modality, but it remains unclear how olfaction and cognition are linked together. Here we investigate how domestic dogs search for their owners using their excellent olfactory sense. We raise the question whether dogs have a representation of someone when they smell their track. The question is what they expect when they follow a trail or whether they perceive an odour as a relevant or non-relevant stimulus. We adopted a classical violation-of-expectation paradigm-and as targets we used two persons that were both important to the dog, usually the owners. In the critical condition subjects could track the odour trail of one target, but at the end of the trail they find another target. Dogs showed an increased activity when the person did not correspond with the trail compared to a control condition. Moreover, we found huge individual differences in searching behaviour supporting the assumption that dogs are only able to smell when they really sniff, and that the temperature has an influence on dogs performance. Results are discussed in the light of how cognitive abilities, motivation and odour perception influence each other.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.