Animals with the best sense of smell in the world

1– Champion sniffer – The bear
A bear’s brain is a third of the size of ours, yet the part devoted to smell is five times larger. They possess big noses and the inside surfaces of their nostrils are enlarged with folds that make room for thousands of smell receptors. Their sense of smell is certainly better than a bloodhound’s and, quite possibly, is the best of any land animal.

2- Best lunch detector – The Shark
Two-thirds of a shark’s brain is dedicated to smell and it can detect the tiniest drop of blood from more than a mile away. Astonishingly even uninjured fish are not safe from a shark’s surveillance. A merely nervous fish emits chemicals to warn others.  Unfortunately for them, these signals can be picked up by…yep, you’ve guessed it.

3- Best ‘mate’ detection – The Moth
Imagine being able to sniff your future wife from 6-7 miles away. Well, that’s what a moth does using its feathery antennae.

4- Best detective – The dog (Bloodhound)
A bloodhound can stay on the trail of a person after several days, even if that person has walked through busy shopping centres and streets. In fact their sense of smell is so good, it’s better than the best man-made odour detecting machines. Some dogs can even detect certain types of cancer and they do so with greater accuracy than state-of-the-art screening equipment.
 
5- Best air sniffer - The snake
We’ve all seen a snake flick out its tongue. They do this because, unlike us, they smell with them. So when a snake starts flicking its tongue rapidly, it’s a sure sign it has smelt something interesting in the air.
 
6- Best landmine detector – The rat
Like dogs, rats can be trained to use their exceptional sense of smell - they can smell in stereo with each nostril working independently of the other - to detect land mines. In a test on a real minefield, a team of six giant Gambian pouched rats found all 20 hidden land mines. The great advantage of using rats is that they’re cheaper to keep and train than dogs.
The Nigerian Army can employ this in the fight against Boko Haram insurgency

7- Best bird sense of smell – The albatross
Most birds rely on keen eyesight and have a poor sense of smell. The albatross is one of the exceptions. This great bird spends its time hovering above the ocean on the look out for food. And to help it do this, it has an extra-large nose on top of its beak. This over-sized honk helps the albatross detect food floating on the sea, even when it is dark.

- The albatross
- The Bear

Animals with the best sense of hearing

1- Sharpest hearing – The owl
These birds have phenomenal hearing. Their large ear holes are at slightly different heights, above and below eye level, helping them pinpoint the vertical positions of sound sources. But what is truly astonishing is their reaction time. In complete darkness, it takes tawny owls less than 0.01 of a second to assess the precise direction of a scurrying mouse, for example.

2- Best natural sonar system – Bats & dolphins
Bats and dolphins find their way in complete darkness, or murky waters, using a biological sonar system called echolation. This involves emitting ultrasonic chirps (or clicks) and interpreting the echo the sound waves make after bouncing off objects and other creatures in their vicinity.
Echolation is so accurate that with each chirp, a bat or dolphin can tell the location, size, direction and even the physical nature of an object.
Bat echolation
If you’re an insect flying 15-20 feet away from a bat in complete darkness - you’ve had it! Remarkably, bats prevent damage to their own ears by closing them with every wing stroke.
Dolphin echolation
An echolating dolphin can detect a 2.5 cm object, such as a big coin, from over 70 metres away.

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Best rain detector – The elephant
Elephants have an exceptional sense of hearing (and smell) and can hear at frequencies twenty times lower than us.  They also use their trunk and feet to hear, both of which are packed with special receptors to pick up on low frequency vibrations. Their exceptional hearing ability helps them ‘tune into’ things such as thunderstorms and explains the well observed phenomenon that elephants are always the first animals to move towards rain. And it is believed their low rumble calls can be picked up by other elephants 6 km away.  One essential reason for such long distance conversation is for females to be able to make as many males in the area aware that she is ready to mate – something that happens only a few days every 2-4 years.

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Best navigator using sound – The pigeon
Like elephants, pigeons can hear sounds at exceptionally low frequencies and this helps to explain their exceptional sense of direction. For example, steep hillsides reflect airbourne sound waves horizontally, providing a unique low-frequency beacon that pigeons can perceive for hundreds of miles. And there is vast source of such infra-sound in nature - thunderstorms, seismic activity, even the motion of the sea – allowing pigeons to build an acoustic landscape which is totally unknown to us. Pigeons also possess the equivalent of an in-built compass which allows them to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field and the position of the Sun. In combination with their hearing – this makes them, probably, the best navigators in nature.
 
5- Cats vs. dogs – Cats
Cats win. Not only can they hear higher frequencies than us (and dogs), they can distinguish a sound’s tone and locate its source far better too. With 30 different muscles, the cat can independently rotate each of its ears 180 degrees, and position one ear or both facing any sound the cat detects. And thanks to their shape, sound gets funnelled down to a cat’s middle ear extremely effectively. So effectively, in fact, that from a metre away your average moggy can easily distinguish the sound of you opening the door to the cat food cupboard from the sound of you opening the cupboard door next to it.

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Best hearing defence – The tiger moth
Bats use echolation – (read above) – to detect prey in the dark.  However some moths, such as the tiger moth have evolved super sensitive ears that can hear bats ultrasonic chirps. So when they hear a bat closing in on them – they can take evasive action, often resulting in a dramatic aerial acrobatic contest between predator and prey; which, more often than not, the bat would win. So moths got smarter. Instead of just taking evasive action, they emitted sound back to bat, often emitting as many as 450 clicks in 1/10th of a second. Such action effectively jams the bat’s sonar and confuses them, allowing the moth to fly another day.