A BEAR'S SENSE OF SMELL

If someone were to ask you, "how does a bear smell," you could answer in two ways. Bears smell real bad – or so I’m told. Bears are thought to have the best sense of smell of any animal on earth. For example, the average dog’s sense of smell is 100 times better than a human. A blood hound is 300 times better. A bear’s sense of smell is 7 times better than a blood hound’s or 2,100 times better than a human.

Bears acute sense of smell evolved in order to help them find food, mates, keep track of their cubs and avoid danger, particularly between competing individuals. Except for mother bears, bears are territorial animals that need to range widely to find enough food to sustain themselves.
Bears have an incredible sense of smell because the area of their brain that manages the sense of smell, called the olfactory bulb, is at least 5 times larger than the same area in human brains even though a bear’s brain is one third the size.

Bears also have highly developed noses that contain hundred of tiny muscles and let them manipulate them with the same dexterity as people’s fingers. The surface area inside their 9 inch noses also has hundreds of times more surface area and receptors than a human’s.
So the next time you make camp in bear country, make sure you hang a bear bag or store your food in a bear-resistant bag or canister at least 100 yards away from your shelter.