Why do dogs like to smell other dog’s butts?

Have you ever wondered why when two dogs meet they sniff each other’s butts? What can they smell apart from the unpleasant smell of their fart fumes or poop? Well, it is quite interesting actually! Butt sniffing in dogs is a fine example of chemical communication in the animal kingdom.

You will be surprised to know that your canine buddy’s sense of smell is 10,000 to 1,00,000 times sharper and better than us due to their large olfactory membrane. This is a lump of tissue that is found tucked inside their snout. It can easily be the size of a large handkerchief and holds more than 225 million olfactory receptors. In comparison, our olfactory membrane is the size of a postage stamp and can hold only 5 million olfactory receptors.

Much of your dog’s communication with other dogs is done through smell. So, when you notice your furry friend greeting a dog by sniffing around their butt they are just trying to get a brief background about their new friend in the form of scent molecules and pheromones.

Dogs also have a secondary olfactory system known as the Jacobson’s organ. It’s nerves directly pass on the chemical communication they detect directly to the brain without any interference from other odours.  At the sides of a dog’s butt there are pouches known as anal sacs which contain glands that secrete chemicals that can tell a sniffing dog a lot of information about its owner like their gender, its reproductive status, the state of its health, their diet and even their emotional state.

So, as strange as it may sound butt sniffing is just the canine way of hand shaking and getting introduced to each other!