A snout is the protruding portion of an animal's face, consisting of its nose, mouth, and jaw. In many animals, the structure is called a muzzle, rostrum, or

proboscis A proboscis () is an elongated appendage from the head of an animal, either a vertebrate or an invertebrate. In invertebrates, the term usually refers to tubular mouthparts used for feeding and sucking. In vertebrates, a proboscis is an elonga ...

. The wet furless surface around the nostrils of the nose of many

mammals Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fu ...

is called the rhinarium (colloquially this is the "cold wet snout" of some mammals). The rhinarium is often associated with a stronger sense of olfaction.

Variation

Snouts are found on many mammals in a variety of shapes. Some animals, including ursines and great cats, have box-like snouts, while others, like shrews, have pointed snouts. Pig snouts are flat and cylindrical.

Primates

Strepsirrhine Strepsirrhini or Strepsirhini (; ) is a Order (biology), suborder of primates that includes the Lemuriformes, lemuriform primates, which consist of the lemurs of Fauna of Madagascar, Madagascar, galagos ("bushbabies") and pottos from Fauna of A ...

primates have muzzles, as do baboons.

Great apes The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); '' Gorilla'' (the ...

have reduced muzzles, with the exception being human beings, whose face does not have protruding jaws nor a snout but merely a human nose.

Dogs

The muzzle begins at the stop, just below the eyes, and includes the dog's nose and mouth. In the domestic dog, most of the upper muzzle contains organs for detecting scents. The loose flaps of skin on the sides of the upper muzzle that hang to different lengths over the

mouth In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on t ...

are called flews'.'' The muzzle is innervated by one of the twelve pairs of cranial nerves, which start in the brain and emerge through the skull to their target organs. Other destinations of these nerves are the eyeballs, teeth and tongue. The muzzle shape of a domestic dog ranges in shape depending upon the breed, from extremely long and thin (dolichocephalic), as in the Rough Collie, to nearly nonexistent because it is so flat (extreme brachycephalic), as in the pug. Some breeds, such as many sled dogs and Spitz types, have muzzles that somewhat resemble the original

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

's in size and shape, and others in the less extreme range have shortened it somewhat (mesocephalic) as in many hounds.

References

{{wiktionary Dog anatomy Animal anatomy