Q: Why do my dog's paws smell like corn chips?

A: Most of us have asked that question at one time or another.

Give a dog's paws a good sniff and they indeed have a pleasant odor of tortilla chips, or maybe popcorn. For the science behind the smell, we turned to Harold McGee's book "Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells."

There are a couple of reasons, it turns out. One is that paws, like our own feet, provide microbes with an abundance of things they like in an environment: warmth, moisture, food (think skin oils and dead cells) and protective skin folds, such as between the toes. When microbes take up residence, they generate strong odors, which is why we humans wash our feet thoroughly and frequently.

McGee didn't find any peer-reviewed studies of dog paw volatiles — organic compounds emitted by skin — (we didn't, either), but attributes the odor to the likely presence of a volatile called aminoacetophenone, which not only contributes to the smell of corn chips, but also to grapes, strawberries and chestnut honey.

"It's also diagnostic for the presence of a specific bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause serious infections in both dogs and humans," McGee writes.

The good news is that this microbe is relatively innocuous rather than aggressively infectious. It's commonly found in soil, water and in the air.

"So while the corn-chip smell may be pleasant and amusing, it's also a reminder of the invisible multitudes clinging to those paws, some of them biding their time for a scratch or cut to infect.

If the smell is strong, it's probably time to think about a bath," McGee concludes. Or possibly a trip to your veterinarian to make sure an infection isn't brewing from an overgrowth of yeast organisms.

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