Czech J. Anim. Sci., 2016, 61(4):172-176 | DOI: 10.17221/8848-CJAS

Resistance of human odours to extremely high temperature as revealed by trained dogsOriginal Paper

M. Santariová1, L. Pinc1, L. Bartoš1,2, P. Vyplelová1, J. Gerneš3, V. Sekyrová4
1 Canine Behavior Research Center, Department of Animal Science and Ethology, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
2 Department of Ethology, Institute of Animal Science Prague-Uhříněves, Czech Republic
3 Police Canine Training Centre, Czech Republic Police Presidium, Plzeň-Bílá Hora, Czech Republic
4 Institute of Criminalistics, Prague, Czech Republic

Human scent is a complex combination of many chemical substances. Skin is supposed to be one of sources of scent traces. The values of the boiling points of human scent compounds were supposed to be lower than 300°C. The purpose of the study was to determine the temperature at which the human scent is degraded so that a dog would not be able to identify it. In contrast to expectations, eight dogs used in the experiment almost flawlessly identified human scents from five scent donors exposed to temperatures of 100°C, 200°C, 300°C, 400°C, 500°C, 600°C, 700°C, and 800°C. Only two of the dogs were able to identify 5 of 15 scent samples exposed to 900°C. No dog identified a scent exposed to 1000°C. Our study verified heat survivability of human scent far beyond existing expectations. There may be an extremely heat resistant, previously undetected, compound of human scent, unsusceptible to heat which exceeds standard temperatures used for sterilization. We anticipate our results to be a starting point for cardinal change of our view of factors affecting the vulnerability of human scent, resulting in the need to alter the approach of forensic methodology dealing with identification of human scent.

Keywords: human scent; scent identification; scent heat resistance; vulnerability of human scent; evidence in law of court

Published: April 30, 2016  Show citation

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Santariová M, Pinc L, Bartoš L, Vyplelová P, Gerneš J, Sekyrová V. Resistance of human odours to extremely high temperature as revealed by trained dogs. Czech J. Anim. Sci. 2016;61(4):172-176. doi: 10.17221/8848-CJAS.
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