Our canine companions have proven once again how finely tuned they are to our feelings \u2013 this time in a scientific sniffing test.<\/p>\n Scientists discovered that dogs can smell stress in our breath and sweat.<\/p>\n Four dogs \u2013 pets volunteered by their owners \u2013 were trained to \u201cchoose\u201d one of three scent canisters.<\/p>\n And in more than 650 out of 700 trials, they successfully identified a sample of sweat or breath that had been taken from a stressed person.<\/p>\n The researchers, at Queen\u2019s University Belfast, hope their study,\u00a0published in the journal Plos One, will help in the training of therapy dogs.<\/p>\n Dogs experience their world through smell. And their highly sensitive scent-detection abilities are already used to detect drugs, explosives, and illnesses, including certain cancers, diabetes and\u00a0even Covid.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had lots of evidence that dogs can pick up smells from humans that are associated with certain medical conditions or disease \u2013 but we don\u2019t have much evidence that they can smell differences in our psychological state,\u201d lead researcher Clara Wilson said.<\/p>\n The 36 human volunteers reported their stress levels before and after completing a difficult maths problem.<\/p>\n Each can contained a sample of their sweat or breath from before or \u2013 as long as their blood pressure and heart rate had also increased \u2013 after.<\/p>\n And if the dogs, Treo, Fingal, Soot and Winnie, stood still or sat in front of the \u201cstressed\u201d sample, they were rewarded with a favourite dog treat.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/gp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/_126884435_mediaitem126884434.jpg.webp.webp\")
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