Why dogs eat faeces, according to a dog cognition scientist
It has to do with how dogs use their keen sense of smell to ‘see’ the world
Plenty of stuff divides us as people, but there’s one thing we can all agree on: poop smells bad.
No matter what you eat, no matter how healthy you are, your excrement doesn’t smell good. Sorry, Khloé Kardashian — even you.
Jokes aside, there’s a good reason for that human aversion to repulsive smells: It’s evolutionary protection.
The perception of a “bad” smell is what keeps us from eating potential poisons. So the evolutionary logic goes: Ancestors of ours who were able to avoid death/sickness from eating poisonous material survived, while those who didn’t have that trait... didn’t survive. We are the product of their survival.
And yet, when it comes to dogs, that aversion to “bad” smells doesn’t exist in the same way. To put it directly, dogs sometimes eat things that they shouldn’t: chocolate, onions, and even waste (poop).
