Can Humans Track a Scent? Dogs are famous for their ability to track a scent. Humans? Not so much. However, it turns out that people are better trackers than you might think. Berkeley scientist Jess Porter and colleagues (2007) embedded a long line of chocolate-scented twine into the ground and then tested whether human undergraduates could find and track the scent using their olfactory sense alone. To block all other sensory cues, the college students wore opaque eye masks, earmuffs, and thick knee pads, elbow pads, and work gloves. Although the human trackers were able to locate and follow the trail, their average speed was only about one inch per second. However, after only a few days of practice, the trackers’ speed doubled, improving to two inches per second.

Courtesy Noam Sobel