The dog is better known than the macrosmatic rat, red deer, salmon or shark for having an excellent sense of smell.

With up to 220 million olfactory cells and more competent than many mammals, the dog's olfactory ability is about a million better than that of humans, which is not solely due to the number of olfactory cells.

Salmon recognize the river they grew up in by smell and are able to return there.

But you can't train them to find shrink-wrapped cocaine hidden in the water.

Some of the approximately 350 dog breeds, on the other hand, are used as drug search dogs.

After their training, they are able to distinguish between cocaine, hashish, marijuana, ecstasy, heroin and amphetamine.

The fact that they can sniff out invisible residues allows the investigators to secure evidence such as means of transport and storage and thus track down couriers and dealers.

Wolves and humans go together

The name Canis lupus familiaris already indicates that the domestic dog belongs to the dog family, Canidae, and to the wolf species, Lupus.

It is also indisputably descended from the wolf.

In his introduction to “Pets”, Josef H. Reichholf writes that he considers the thesis of the anthropologist Pat Shipman, according to which Homo sapiens was able to replace the Neanderthals by using the wolf as a hunting partner to the dog, to be plausible.

Both of their favorite foods were meat.

“Wolves and people with the hunter-gatherer way of life fit together almost perfectly in their social behavior.

Both partners gain in efficiency by living together.”

Reichholf does not believe that wolves were tamed in the Ice Age world by man offering them the remains of hunted mammoths.

He writes that those wolves that would have adapted best to human behavior would have survived for generations: “Wolves that learned to read people’s faces.” His interesting thesis is: “Wolves that adapt to humans approached, domesticated themselves.”

With the sedentary nature of humans and the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, the partnership between dogs and humans has become exploitation by humans.

Maybe that's true, there are many dogs that are domesticated but not socialized.

Maybe the strays and poachers just want to evade exploitation?

A scientific distinction is therefore made between domestic dogs and those that do not live in a social community with humans, but are wild like wolves.

Thomas Mann, the rabbit hunter

Every lapdog owner is reminded that domestic dogs belong in the order of predatory animals, Carnivora, as soon as he pushes his darling's lips away and opens his mouth, in which the hook or canine teeth can be dangerously long even in specimens that are only calf-high.

Not to mention the rear fangs in the upper and lower jaws, which aren't used to chew up blueberries (although many dogs like blueberries) but to crush meat.

The many civilian tasks that dogs do with fun and for which they are rewarded in a species-appropriate manner and treated well, make it all the more incomprehensible why someone would be called a “stupid dog”.

They rescue mountaineers or skiers who have been trapped or rush into blackberry hedges in a ruthless manner to rouse the wild boars hidden in them from the hunting party.

The hunting passion of some breeds is legendary.

"Senses and physique are optimized for life as a huntsman," writes Joscha Grolms in his great reference book "Tierspuren Europa".

The best story of Thomas Mann in his book "Herr und Hund", rich in interesting observations but also brutal behavior towards his favorite dog Bauschan, is that of an unusual rabbit hunt.

The rabbit, chased by Bauschan, suddenly races towards the hunter, who speculates that the animal must have mistaken the standing dog owner for a tree: “Was he out of his mind with fear of death?

Enough, he sprang up on me, just like a puppy, ran up my overcoat with his front paws, and strove with his head erect in my lap, in the horrible bosom of the hunter!'