Police on Thursday revived their search for Etan Patz, a 6-year-old who disappeared in 1979 en route to a New York City bus stop, after a cadaver-sniffing dog recently detected the odor of human remains in a basement near Patz’s SoHo home. Can dogs really smell 33-year-old remains?
Yes, if you have the right dog.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/04/etan-patz-search-renewed-can-cadaver-dogs-smell-30-year-old-corpses.html
I agreed with what that author writes.
"No one knows exactly what dogs are smelling when they indicate the possible presence of remains. Well-trained cadaver dogs will not flag a living person or an animal. Possible scents include two byproducts of decomposition: putrescine and cadaverine. Although these compounds are common to all decaying material, an ace cadaver dog has such fine-tuned senses, it can differentiate human remains from most animals’. Belgian researchers at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels recently isolated a compound, dimethyl sulphide, that trained dogs will detect and respond to. The sulfide itself accompanies putrefaction in many kinds of organic matter, including human."
I doubt if it is a combination of these chemicals that is the species specific odour. The "species" odour IMO is with the animal even when it it is alive, probably plus these 3 others which signify "and dead".
