In the forest close to my house in Tuscany, there is a group of wild goats. When walking in the forest, I can smell their pungent odour many minutes before I see them, and they can be tens of metres away. Why are the goats so smelly? And if I can smell them from so far away with my relatively weak primate nose, can a wolf, lynx or another predator smell them from kilometres away?
Alessandro Saragosa, Terranuova, Italy
This article appeared in print under the headline “Smelly goat Bluff?”
