# Which animal has the best sense of smell?

> Noses, antennae, forked tongues and one mole that sniffs underwater. The famous trackers are not obviously the best ones.

*By YPB Team · Published September 19, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/which-animal-has-the-best-sense-of-smell*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Bloodhound** — score 1000/1000
   The dog whose tracking evidence courts have accepted, able to follow a trail days old.
2. **Snake** — score 835/1000
   Collects scent particles on its forked tongue and reads them in stereo through the Jacobson's organ.
3. **African Elephant** — score 762/1000
   Carries more olfactory receptor genes than any other animal yet sequenced, and can smell water underground.
4. **Grizzly Bear** — score 734/1000
   Can detect a carcass miles away, with a nose widely rated several times sharper than a bloodhound's.
5. **Giant Anteater** — score 659/1000
   The giant anteater locates termite mounds with a sense of smell rated dozens of times sharper than ours.
6. **Turkey Vulture** — score 571/1000
   Finds carrion under a forest canopy by smell alone, which most birds of prey cannot do.
7. **Silkmoth** — score 571/1000
   The male detects a single female pheromone molecule on its feathered antennae from miles downwind.
8. **Honeybee** — score 571/1000
   Distinguishes hundreds of floral scents, and can be trained to flag explosives in minutes.
9. **Fruit Fly** — score 467/1000
   Fruit flies locate fermenting fruit from far outside visual range using a few hundred receptor types.
10. **Polar Bear** — score 467/1000
   Reported to scent a seal under a metre of packed snow from a kilometre away.
11. **Great White Shark** — score 343/1000
   Detects blood at roughly one part per ten billion, with two-thirds of its brain given over to smell.
12. **Kiwi** — score 343/1000
   The only bird with nostrils at the tip of its beak, probing soil for worms it cannot see.
13. **Star-nosed Mole** — score 343/1000
   Sniffs underwater by blowing bubbles and re-inhaling them, the only mammal known to do it.
14. **Rat** — score 0/1000
   Trained African giant pouched rats clear minefields and screen tuberculosis samples faster than lab equipment.
15. **Salmon** — score 0/1000
   Navigates back from the open ocean to the exact stream it hatched in, guided by the water's smell.

Tags: nature, science, animals, records