Clever dogs find food by sniffing other dogs' breath

London, July 8 (ANI): Dogs can find food by sniffing the snouts of fellow canines, finds a new study.

"They're scavengers," New Scientist magazine quoted Clive Wynne, a psychologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, as saying.

"It would seem to be advantageous for them to pay attention to where another dog finds a titbit and go after it," she added.

During the study, Marianne Heberlein at the Institute of Zoology in Zurich, Switzerland, left 13 dogs to search for food behind one of four barriers.

As the dogs had been shown where the treat was beforehand, they always went to the same place.

However, Heberlein took away the treat from some of dogs, and they found nothing to eat.

Then both groups of dogs were made to interact with 11 dogs from a second group, none of which knew where the treats were.

The researchers noted that sometimes dogs would sniff each other's nose.

Each of the dogs from the second group was then allowed to search for food behind the barriers.

The researchers revealed that where the first pooch found food, the second dog tended to visit that corner first- especially if the dog had caught a whiff of the other's breath.

Heberlein said that that showed that the second dog based its search on whether or not it smelled food on the breath of the first dog. (ANI)