How good is a dog’s sense of taste?

Photo by Brenda Timmermans

A dog’s sense of smell is renowned for being exceptional, but how does their sense of taste compare to ours? Surprisingly, we have 5 times more taste buds than a dog, so at first glance it seems like our sense of taste is better. Like us, dogs can taste things that are sweet, sour, salty and bitter, but they’re unable to taste a type of savoury flavour that we can detect, known as umami. Although dogs are unable to taste umami, they can taste water, something we’re not capable of. When we eat, our sense of smell is responsible for around 80% of what we taste, so it’s likely that a dog’s sensational sense of smell makes up for their lack of taste buds.