Emotion and the brain

Abstract

My first introduction to the subject of olfaction concerned an experiment to discover how quickly ewes learned the smell of their post-partum lambs (Smith, Van Toller and Boyes, 1966). For humans who are visually dominated it is difficult to imagine the world of an animal that can see perfectly adequately but chooses to use its sense of smell. As the cold, grey days of March in the northern hills of Britain slowly unrolled I became aware of the fact that the’ stupidity’ of sheep came about because they preferred to use their sense of smell. In a flock it is clearly of advantage to rely on the sense of smell. We thought that keeping down-wind of the animals would enable us to advance and get to the ewes that were in labour. Unfortunately we found that they visually spotted us almost before we spotted them. Later I observed ewes and lambs locating each other with great accuracy using their sense of smell. I saw ewes, without turning their heads to see, kick away presumptuous lambs who were not their own, and who attempted to suckle them. I came to wonder at their smell sense that was clearly more finely tuned than mine. My superior human cognitive abilities were often thwarted by the sheep whose olfactory sensory ability seemed little short of miraculous at times.