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Q: Can cats sense illness, and can it make them change their behaviour?
Another possibility is that the best sense of smell can detect the faintest whiff. By this measure, it’s hard to beat a male silk moth, which can sniff out a female’s sexual pheromone at a concentration of one molecule per 100 quadrillion (that’s a one followed by 17 zeros) air molecules. And a moth doesn’t even have a nose. How does it smell then? It is because of receptor proteins on its antennae.
The size of the olfactory bulb might also be a good measure of an animal’s sense of smell. Among birds, they don’t get any bigger than those of turkey vultures, which rely on scent to detect carcasses from high in the air.
Bears, too, are well endowed in this respect, and there is evidence that polar bears can detect seal breathing holes from 3 km away. No clear winner then for animal with the best sense of smell (1).
Here is a list of creatures with the strongest sense of smell in the animal kingdom.
African Giant Pouched Rats, Silvertip Grizzlies, Great White Shark, Kiwi, Blood Hound, Turkey Vultures, Male Silk Moth, Basset Hound, Snakes, and African Elephants (2).Some scientists say elephants have the highest smell sense because they have the most genes devoted to smelling.
The study behind that article from 2014: http://genome.cshlp.org/content/24/9/1485.full, unfortunately did not list bear as one of the animals studied.
Image source: Genome research
Examples of some animals who have high sense of smell:
While dogs are renowned for their sense of smell, many other animals including cats, pigs, bears, elephants, bloodhounds, sharks, and snakes also possess exceptional olfactory abilities.
Image source: Pixabay
But cats don't come under these very highly rated animals with regard to smell.
People say pet dogs and cats can even identify that their female owners are pregnant!
Earlier, we too owned some cats for several years. I didn't notice anything specific about their sense of smell with regard to human beings and their diseases despite my parents' health conditions and my sister's pregnancy.
Yes, cats can find food, mates, enemies using smell, I noticed this.
Right, cats can sense some chemical changes that occur in a diseased system because of altered scent, like some other animals. But they really don’t know the "science behind the diseases". Therefore, they cannot realize their owner is sick in what way. Sensing the change in odour is not sensing the disease. Get that right first. (3)
If disease or pregnancy related changes have you riding the emotional roller coaster, your pet is probably noticing it too. But It really cannot phantom the reason for it. It might change its response to your behaviour.
Any positive behavioural changes you say happen is just your wishful thinking, strange perception and attributing your thoughts to dogs, cats and other pets! That’s all! (3)
Even though the stories told by pet owners sound interesting , they can't be completely true, but attract people because of the emotions involved with a pet , its 'perception and prediction' of disease or health condition of its owner and strange interpretations of love and understanding.
I loved my cats and know how far they can go with regard to smells but have scientific knowledge enough to say they can't identify specific diseases because they don't know the science of it. They just know that there is a change in odour and show some attentiveness to it. That's it!
Don't attribute 'specific knowledge' to this curiosity of pets, especially if they are not 'trained' in some way.
Footnotes:
1. https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/which-animal-has-the-best-sense-of-smell
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