Part 3: Testing Bloodhounds Summary and Analysis

Feynman reads a magazine article that tells him how bloodhounds are able to identify, by smell, the objects that people have touched. This fascinates him, and he asks his wife to help him experiment with this idea.

He leaves the room and his wife picks a book off the shelf and handles it. Later he comes back into the room, and is surprised by how easily he can identify the book she was holding by smell.

He later repeats this as a "party trick" during his time at CalTech. Although he explains to his audience that he is identifying the books by smell, he has difficulty convincing them that his act is genuine.

Feynman is astounded what a human being can determine through the smells secreted by a person's hands as well as by most people's complete...