Birds and Sense of Smell

Question: Do birds have a good sense of smell?

Answer: For some birds, the answer is definitely a yes. Work in bird behavior shows that some can smell their way home from fairly short distances. Other birds use smell to find food. Some birds even recognize other birds by smell.

Moreover, recent work in genetics showed that birds have lots of active genes related to smell. That means that these genes are turned on, and that might indicate the importance of smell for these animals. So, maybe birds use smell even more than we think.


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