For a long time, our family was stumped by the mystery. How did Donut know when it was time? The exact moment before the bus arrives is not just the approximate time. It happens every now and then. There is only one single person. It's a day.
Donut was my husband's dog when I was a kid.
My husband, Matt, says that she was a stray when he was young. There were giant white and black spots on her flanks. Matt says she was a dog. He says that they knew she was a hound. She would wander the neighborhood so we had to be careful not to let her go.
Donut was a big fan of sleeping. Donut slept on the living room rug and chewed on bones while Matt and his brother went to school. The bones were hidden under the sofa cushions.
Donut would hop up from the rug and go to the back porch before the bus dropped the boys off.
She waited for my brother and I to walk home so she could greet us. She was on time. Always early and always late.
This fascinating story was told to me every winter holiday by Matt's family. I would tell myself that I would figure out how Donut does it and write a story for NPR. I wouldn't have time because I got too busy.
This year isn't it? The mystery of Donut's time skills was solved this month. The wait has been worthwhile. Guess what Donut could do. She could smell the time.
"I'm not surprised that Donut would be able to predict the arrival of the school bus, I've known that for a long time."
She says dogs use many environmental signals to estimate the time during the day. They listen to their body's signals, such as a rumble in their tummy or a need to sleep. They have the same hormones that help create a clock in their bodies.
The amount of light shining into a room is one thing they look at. Humans and dogs notice that the room is getting a bit dark.
She thinks Donut has another trick up her furry leg that we humans don't use to tell time. I believe that dogs are able to track time with smells.
I was somewhat surprised when I heard this theory. How do you smell when you're asleep? I started to realize that maybe I smell time as well, after learning about it from Horowitz. Maybe dogs understand physics in a different way than I do.
The smell of Donut probably began with Matt's own unique scent. She says that humans stink. The smell of their owner can be enough to recognize them.
We leave our stinky signature all over the place. She says that they always leave behind a trail of odor. If someone has been in the elevator before you, you can smell it.
Matt and his brother were in elementary school in the late 1980's. The smell of their baseball uniforms, the smell of their dirty socks, and the smell of their hair product filled their home.
As Matt and his brother rushed out the door to catch the bus, their living room would smell of two young boys.
Donut was going to be swimming in Matt's smell as she went to sleep. The house smelled different over time. The smell would get weaker and the odors would get worse.
There's no question that Donut noticed the gradual diminishment of Matt's scent over the course of the day because of her massive nose and brain.
"Yes, absolutely," he said. Dogs are sensitive to the odors of their owner.
The shift in smell was not noticed by Donut. She might have used it to predict when the school bus would come.
Matt and his brother were away from their home for the same amount of time. The smell in the house was the same before the bus arrived.
The imminent return of Matt and his brother probably made Donut associate that level of smell with them.
Donut smelled time pass instead of simply seeing time pass on a clock. Dogs might render in olfaction if we imagine things as visual experiences. They could experience spaces, recognize things and have memories in smell.
She says that odors have been baked into them in a way that doesn't correspond to visual signals. "Odors that are lying on the ground are telling us about the past." They say who has been there. If there's a breeze coming up the street, that could be a sign that someone is near the corner. It's telling us about our future.
The time- sniffing is only a hypothesis. Although the hypothesis stood up to their very unscientific experiment, nobody has ever tested it on a scientific basis.
Gregory Berns says dogs aren't the only ones that track time with smells. The scent of time is used by many animals. Even people.
We use smell when we look at food. Berns says that he gives the milk carton a sniff test before he uses it. It's likely that every animal does that to decide if something is okay to eat. It's adapted to its environment.
Donut's method of calculating the arrival of the school bus is more sophisticated than the human way of sniffing time.
The scent of missing people can be tracked by dogs through space.
Tracking and trailing dogs use the intensity of the smell to determine the direction of a track or trail. Younger odors are going to be stronger and more intense than older ones.
Even though dogs are keeping track of space, they are also keeping track of time. Time is interwoven into space for dogs. The way physicists describe and think about time and space is similar to this.
The dogs are smarter than we think. Donut was showing off his skills while Matt was in school.
This story is part of our periodic science series called "Finding Time", which explores what makes us tick.
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