Besides smelling, animals use sniffing as a way to communicate.
Have you ever noticed your pet sniffing other animals?
New research suggests that animals use sniffing as a form of communication.
Rats show dominance and avoid the need for aggressive behavior by sniffing each other.
Doctor Daniel W. Wesson from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine studied a group of rats and found that the dominant rat will sniff more while the subordinate rat signals its place in the social hierarchy by sniffing less.
If these rules are not followed, the dominant rat will use more aggressive behavior.
Doctor Wesson said: "This sniffing behavior might reflect a common mechanism of communication behavior across many types of animals and in a variety of social contexts. It is highly likely that our pets use similar communication strategies in front of our eyes each day, but because we do not use this ourselves, it isn't recognizable as communication."
Most of the vocalized noises made by rats are ultrasonic frequencies that are too high to be heard by humans.
One theory suggests that rats developed the system of high frequency communication as a way of signaling each other, while remaining undetected by the various animals that prey on them.
