Dogs' amazing sense of smell down to a wet nose

DOGS’ extraordinary ability to sniff out anything from cocaine to cancer turns out to owe much to the gunk inside their nose.

Dogs have many more nerve cells in their nasal cavities than we do and a wider variety of receptors to latch on to odour molecules. Now a team led by Brent Craven of Pennsylvania State University in University Park has shown that the complex network of snot-coated tubes in a dog’s nose also “pre-sorts” smells,…