#dog nose science yamswer

[mokutone]

PLEASE talk about kakashi dog nose, i live for this stuff

SDGKJHSDGJKSHGD okay...okay i got a kakashi dog nose idea for you... u know how on a dogs nose they have those slits at the sides? this allows for air to have a constant flow in and out of the nose, giving the sniffer an unbroken scent sensory imput. if a regular human were trying to sniff something, we'd have to kinda huff the scent in, and then huff air out in order to pull in a new waft of air—given that kakashi's face is covered including his nose, i feel we're given some freedom to play in...here, i'll give u a drawing of a hypothetical nose for a shinobi (inuzuka or hatake) which could look like this

[mokutone]

points a water pistol at u talk abt kakashi dog nose science or else.

OH NOOOO this is a stick up...alright, alright! u've forced my hand...more kakashi nose science!!!!! my favorite but most complicated kakashi canine nose hc is like. okay so both humans and dogs have a vomeronasal organ (also called the jacobson organ sometimes) BUT humans have lost almost all of our ability to use this! dogs have not.

(stanley coren, whomst i have a love-hate relationship with his work, theorized that the reason we lost our ability to use this organ was Because our relationship to protodog-canines meant that we could outsource mechanisms of that (like tracking prey) to the dogs!) but this isn't a stanley coren talk this is a vomernasal organ kakashi nose chakras talk

the vomeronasal organ is used to interpret ectohormones and other scents typically undetectable to humans—which probably plays a large part in how dogs are able to so quickly identify feelings of anxiety or other similar chemical signatures in their handlers! this in mind, when i write or draw kakashi, it's usually with the idea that he's generally fairly aware of the way other people are feeling—not that this means he's any good at reacting to those feelings! no amount of knowing that somebody is anxious is going to give him understanding of how to help sdkjghsdkghs there's also an interesting space to explore in how to /write/ about somebody who has such an expansive understanding of smell—like to me my grandparents smell like cigarettes and peanut butter cookies—but i know that they don't "actually" smell like that, it's just that those smells cling to them, and, human as I am that's kind of the depth of what I can experience! but when dogs recognize the scent of an individual, it's not the scents that cling to them, perfume or deodorant, foods they eat, places they've been—they're aware of those things, but when a dog knows our scent, they're recognizing something more like an expression of our genetics (which is why dogs sometimes have trouble telling unfamiliar identical twins apart by scent!) if we were to expect Kakashi to have those kind of skills, writing say about how he experiences the smell of the people around him might be interesting and complicated—Naruto, despite having had no contact with his parents and no shared items from his parents, no shared cooking, nothing, would still probably smell a little like Kushina and Minato—or, assuming that the nine tailed fox has a chemical affect on Naruto as well (it probably would!) it might have a smell as well. Tsunade and Yamato both might share traces of Hashirama. (Also Yamato might just smell a little bit plant-y in general bc the use of mokuton is something which is genetic to him.

Artistically it presents an interesting challenge—how to describe a sense or feeling that we don't have the capability to experience? I love it because it feels like a challenge well met by poetic language and metaphor.

for example, writing isn't something i've been trained in, but here's how i try to handle it:

"Tenzō, who had been standing over him with a small bowl in one hand, the other braced against Kakashi’s shoulder to shake him awake, said nothing. He put the bowl down and withdrew his hand, but Kakashi still caught that bright whiff of cortisol, as familiar to him as ash to a smoker."

i describe cortisol (an important hormone in stress reactions) as smelling bright because that's typically a visual word, so it already puts this kind of scent in an abstract realm, and because i'm thinking of it like a flare—my first instinct was to call it acrid—a scent word for a scent description, but then i just...kept thinking abt like. grapefruit smell, and i am certain that since this is a scent which already exists under its own chemical makeup, whatever stress smells like to dogs, it's not that

ANYWAY i hope this makes sense and is interesting!

[mokutone]

wait! WAIT!

You can’t just drop that tag and not elaborate! I gotta know! Please! I’m galaxy braining at science/Naruto combinations at 3 am because of this.

here's something: sun can kinda bake the scent out of things—if you're a dog trying to tail a scent, the worst possible weathers for it are downpour (which will wash clean all the surfaces that scent particles cling to) and a clear, sunny day in a shadeless place—so in suna or amegakure Kakashi's sense of smell would be virtually useless for tracking, but in Konoha, which is perpetually tree-shaded, skills like Kakashi's and the Inuzukas would be incredibly useful and well-suited, so long as they're not in the rainy season!

[mokutone]

I clicked on your blog outta curiousity but im staying for the Yamato plant science part. Mixing Naruto and Science = *heart eyes*

and the art. I DEFINITELY stayed for the art. holy fuck, your art is amazing *bigger heart eyes*

sdjhgsdkjgh thank you! but i really do not deserve credit for the yamato plant science thing, that was was largely not me but the people who responded to me, I just kinda grabbed the easy-to-grab responses n published them on this blog, they are clever and have more knowledge in that field than i do!