Nose Knows: Wild Ways Animals Smell the World

Gr 1-5–This large-format picture book describes the ways animals use their sense of smell as a guide to find food, bond with offspring, impress a potential mate, and more. The book is organized into seven sections, and features large, colorful illustrations that bring the text to life, many with a lift-the-flap feature that pack an impressive amount of information. The opening section, “The Invisible World of Smells,” states that humans can detect more than 400,000 different smells. An accompanying illustration shows the noses of a cat and a boy. When readers lift the flap, they see how the olfactory membrane sends messages to the brain. They also learn that cats have a much larger membrane for receiving smells than humans do. The opposite page explains that horses have a second “nose” and that they make “funny faces” in their attempts to sniff more successfully.