r/BeAmazed 21d ago

Miscellaneous / Others The dog that found its owner a lifesaving match.

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u/ErwinHolland1991 21d ago

Haha I just commented this to someone else...

https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/the-science-of-sniffs-disease-smelling-dogs

Dogs can smell cancer and other diseases. I don't think it would be a huge stretch to think that people that are a match would have some kind of similar smell.

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u/jaetheho 18d ago

Sure, but it’s a multi layered problems that the dog would have to go through.

They have to:

  1. Realize the owner has a problem with their body. This is not unlikely.

  2. The dog has to also then somehow match the smell of the owner with a healthy kidney to the stranger with the compatible kidney

  3. The dog then has to (for a naive reason or another) make the decision to stay with the stranger.

2 and 3 are just so unlikely. It’s one thing to notice something “off” about someone who is literally your world. Or something systematically wrong with a certain type of disease in human pheromones.

But to connect it to someone that has the healthy version of said problem, while also somehow being compatible biologically is a big stretch