A good friend can tell when you’re stressed. But “man’s best friend” can likely smell when you’re stressed, according to a new study.
Stress responses trigger physiological changes in our sweat and breath – changes that our dogs can detect with a sniff, according to the study published in the peer-reviewed PLOS ONE Journal last week.
Researchers from Queen’s University in the United Kingdom collected breath and sweat samples from human participants before and after they completed a “stress-inducing” task. Then they had dogs trained in identifying odors distinguish between a “stress” sample and “baseline” sample. The dogs correctly identified the stress sample in 675 out of 720 trials, or roughly 94%.
Dogs have long been deployed by humans as expert sniffers, effectively identifying everything from contraband to someone infected with coronavirus. That’s because they’re able to smell volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, according to the study.
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“While the dogs in this study underwent training in order to communicate that they were able to distinguish between (odors), the found performances on this task suggests that there are VOC changes induced by acute negative stress that are detectable by dogs,” the study reads.
More research is needed to figure out how an untrained dog might communicate or interpret the stress odors, researchers said, but this study at least suggests dogs can smell the odors associated with stress in humans.
The revelation can help further understanding of the relationship between service dogs and owners who have anxiety or PTSD, researchers said.
USA TODAY
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