How search-and-rescue dogs find you.

• Position: Olfactory Tracking - Brief article

The smell navigation mechanics of tracking dogs as well as smaller animals who use a similar olfactory GPS is being explored by University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientist Lucia Jacobs. Her research was featured on "PBS NewsHour."

"Dogs have evolved a range of intricate tricks to follow smells," Jacobs says. For example, when a scent starts to break up, the dogs form a circle around the edges of an odor plume, where they find the olfactory information needed to stay on track.

To test canine olfactory tracking skills, Jacobs teamed up with rescue dog handler Shay Cook and her German shepherd Zinka and other trailing dogs, who were fitted with cameras, GPS...