We have long known that dogs have a keener sense of smell than humans. They use their noses in much the same way as we use our eyes. Quite what kind of map this gives them of the environment and its inhabitants we can scarcely imagine. It’s a map without words and colour but it must have its own waymarks.
The same is true of course of other of our fellow-animals. Bats have navigational aids that help them avoid obstacles. Migrating birds accurately cover vast distances that would have shamed Vikings for all their ambitious oceanic excursions. Salmon find their way home after months at sea without any thing like Ariadne’s string to guide them. Starlings are skilled formation-fliers.
And now we learn that dogs can detect prostate cancer by sniffing. This is one up for the dogs. We have to yield pride of place to them. For all our scans, biopsies and other tests we are being outdone by our best friend. We can but applaud. But we should not perhaps be surprised. Long ago a poet made an enigmatic point when he said: ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength…’ Peterson has a catchy rendering: ‘Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you, toddlers shout the songs that drown out enemy talk…’ Psalm 8.2 – however it is translated – is poetry doing one of the things it does best – inducing the imagination to get hold of something as ungraspable as jelly.
When dogs show a talent of this kind, they make it plain that truth often lies in the unexpected. The dog-star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is a binary phenomenon. The Godon tribe in Mali apparently knew this, or something like it, well before modern astronomers caught up. Maybe they were good at guessing; maybe they were just observant. Timbuktu may hold more secrets yet. It has famous libraries.
We must be careful to recognise our human limitations. We have learned a great deal about the cosmos and our place in it. We are still learning, and rightly so. We must avoid hubris and remember as did Isaac Newton, how little we know and how much we have yet to learn. Otto’s mysterium tremendum (awe-inspiring mystery) takes that unknown territory seriously. So do the words of the man from Nazareth.
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