What did you do today?

[Nanno]

I've only seen them use vision and sound to locate things. I've never seen them use their noses to find something that's lost--even mothers looking for lost babies. I know they have a very good sense of smell, but I'm pretty sure it's tuned to detect predators, recognize hormones (like for bucks and does), mothers recognizing their own kids, and sniffing food. All of this is up-close sniffing and they don't follow the scent unless they are actually following the thing giving off the scent (buck following doe in heat, mama following newborn kid, greedy mobster following the grain bucket, etc.). They sniff scents as they waft by but I've never seen them follow a "scent trail" to locate something that is out of sight. If I quietly left a bucket of sweet feed by the back porch, they would find it by seeing the bucket and running over to investigate, not by following the smell of grain from a place out of sight. Also, when mama goats are looking for lost kids, she will baa-aa in hopes of getting them to talk back to her so she can locate them by sound. Then she makes a final positive smell identification when she gets close enough to nuzzle. But she never "sniffs them out" that I've ever seen.