This chapter discusses the sense of smell of animals. One way of acquiring information from chemicals in the world is through smell. Just as with the other senses, smell is used for many things, from finding food, judging relatedness and kin, locating and assessing potential mates, marking and defending territories, and much more. The chapter focuses first on ants, which are quite representative of how olfaction broadly works in nature. Located on the antennae of many insects are the main sensory receptors for encoding aspects of the world, from temperature and humidity through to pressure. In insect olfaction, the organs in which the receptors are housed are the olfactory sensilla. Meanwhile, the sense of smell of dogs has contributed to their long working relationship with humans, from help in hunting to search and rescue. After being domesticated for so long, dogs are also extremely good at reading humans, and this has clearly been a valuable trait for breeders in producing a variety of working and companion dogs. Finally, the chapter looks at the eastern American mole, which is one of the several mammals that has been shown to smell in stereo. The findings in the stereo mole essentially parallel some of the features of sound detection, rather like the way in which owls zero in on hidden prey based on the noises they make.
Morphological Characterization of the Antennal Sensilla of the Afrotropical Sand Fly, Phlebotomus duboscqi (Diptera: Psychodidae)
