Imagine that, by one of lifeÂ’s more serious vicissitudes, you had to serve as someoneÂ’s dog. Cheer up: you would do better than you think, at least at what might seem the hardest part of the job, tracking a scent.Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that people can follow a scent surprisingly well, as long as they do not mind abandoning all dignity, putting their nose right to the ground and crawling along with their bottoms in the air.
But the achievement, as Samuel Johnson remarked in another context, is “like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”