Page 28 - December 2005 The Game

28 The Game, December 2005 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
SENSING SCENTS
The horse's sense of smell is an undeniably important part of the way he perceives his world. But there's much we still don't understand about his olfactory abilities.
We humans, with our own feeble olfactory talents, can hardly appreciate the extraordinary sensitivity and range of the equine nose, or the dozens of ways in which horses use their sense of smell to identify friends, negotiate sexual relationships, recognize territory, find appetizing meals, and sense danger. While we are vision-oriented, like most predators, horses rely far more on chemical messages in the air than on their relatively indistinct eyesight.
Notes David Whitaker, Ph.D., an animal behaviourist at Middle Tennessee State University, "Horses depend on their sense of smell the way we depend on language."
There's much we don't understand about the actual range and acuity of a horse's sense of smell. But here's a little of what we ‘do’ know.
NASAL ANATOMY
Beyond a horse's prodigious nostrils, which flare to draw in scents more thoroughly, lie long, cavernous nasal pas- sages. The horse's olfactory receptors -- millions of elongated nerve cells which are specialized to analyze smells -- are located in the mucous membranes in the upper portion of the nasal cavity. When airborne
odour molecules come into contact with the mucous membranes, they interact with the microscopic tufts of hair protruding from the receptor cells. By sniffing, the horse can intensify the currents of air in the nasal passages, providing more contact between the odour molecules and the receptor cells, and more time for analysis.
The olfactory nerves divide into two branches -- one which extends over the surface of the olfactory mucosa, and another which acts as a direct pipeline to the brain. The twin olfactory bulbs, distinct areas of the brain responsible for identifying scents, are located at the very front of the cerebrum, one on each lobe, and are connected via the main olfactory nerves to the receptors in the nasal passages.
The whole arrangement sounds fairly simple, but it's only half the story. For as it turns out, horses really have ‘two’ olfactory systems. There's a second pair of olfactory organs lurking under the floor of the horse's nasal cavity -- the vomeronasal organs (sometimes called Jacobsen's organs, after the Danish anatomist Ludvig Jacobsen, who first described them in 1813). Almost all animals are equipped with vomeronasal organs (abbreviated VNO); in fact, humans and cetacean sea mammals (whales and dolphins) are among the few species who are deprived.
Each VNO is tubular and cartilaginous, and averages about 12 centimetres long. (Despite their size, they're so carefully concealed that it's little wonder anatomists before Jacobsen completely missed them.)
They're lined with
mucous
membranes, and
contain more sen-
sory fibres of the
olfactory nerve,
and are connected
to the main nasal
passages by a tube called the nasopalatine duct. The VNOs seem to expand and contract with stimulation from strong odours, like a pump -- and they have their own pathways to the brain, functioning almost as completely separate sensory organs.
Why have two olfactory centres? Well, the main purpose of the VNO is the detection and analysis of pheromones, the chemical signals emanating from other horses which indicate their sexual status. In a way, the VNO is really a sex organ, helping a stallion to identify when a mare is in heat and receptive to breeding, when she is out of season and likely to reject his advances, and when there might be a rival stallion in the area, ready to steal his mares away.
Horses activate their VNOs by tilting up their heads and curling their upper lips in a posture called "flehmen" (roughly trans- lated, it means 'testing'). After a horse draws in the organic odour, the lip curl temporarily closes the nasal passages, and then an upwards head tilt seems to help the airborne molecules linger in the VNO.
Stallions are, by far, the most enthusiastic practitioners of the flehmen posture; in the presence of a mare in estrus,
for example, they might flehmen several times an hour. Mares will also flehmen, though not as frequently; the smell of birthing fluids on a newborn foal often trig- gers it. However, though sex pheromones are the most likely flehmen trigger, they're not the only ones. Occasionally, horses will also react with a lip curl when they come in contact with an unusually strange or pungent inorganic odour -- smoke from a fire, for example, or fresh paint.
A horse's olfactory systems never rest. They're analyzing smells every second of the day -- barn smells and herd smells, water smells and plant smells, and the smells of the humans and other animals that enter his environment every day. In a domestic setup, a horse's olfactory senses may be overwhelmed with artificial odours like liniments, fly sprays, and deworming drugs, a situation which Whitaker thinks "may warp our horse's sense of smell and change the emphasis on their senses.
"I think feral horses likely have a less confused, if not keener, sense of smell," he adds. "They have fewer scents to sort out."
Nonetheless, a domestic horse's sense of smell is still a marvel. A bloodhound he may not be ... but he's still privy to a whole world of olfactory 'colours' we can only imagine.
Equine Health
by Karen Briggs
Dave Landry Photo
Best Wishes for a Very Happy & Healthy Christmas
& New Year
To all my Staff, Owners, Partners, Friends & Racing Fans
Thank You
& Good Luck in 2006
ROGER L. ATTFIELD RACING STABLE
Apprentice Jockey Emma-Jayne Wilson Jim McAleney
A Special Thank You from us for Wonderful Season in 2005
May your Holidays be filled with Joy and the coming year be Overflowing with all the Good Things in Life
See You Next Year from Jockey Jim McAleney, Apprentice Emma Jayne Wilson
& Agent Mike Luider