Forensics

Our Sense of Smell May Be the New Way to Identify Culprits

For millennia humans have relied on dogs for security. Their keen sense of smell provided protection around the ancient campfire and alerted to intruders in the dark ages. Even now, the olfactory abilities of our canine brethren detect explosives, seek out fugitives, and identify criminals. A new study published in Frontiers in Psychology reveals, however, that we humans may also have a bit of hidden power in our snouts.

“Police often use human eye-witnesses, and even ear-witnesses, in lineups but, to date, there have not been any human nose-witnesses,” says Professor Mats Olsson, experimental psychologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. “We wanted to see if humans can identify criminals by their body odor.”

While dogs have been used to identify criminals in courts, until now humans were thought to lack a sufficient sense of smell to perform the same trick. Olsson’s research shows that humans do indeed have the ability to distinguish individuals by their distinct body odours.