Human Sense of Smell Underestimated 278
Benjamin Long writes to note a study, by a team of neuroscientists and engineers, that demonstrated that humans can follow a scent trail — an ability that most had assumed only animals possessed. Furthermore, the study demonstrated for the first time that humans make use of differential information from the two nostrils. The researchers blindfolded college students who crawled through grass to sniff out a chocolate-scented trail. Here is the abstract of the paper in Nature Neuroscience. From the article: "The humans, however, still sniffed much more slowly than dogs, which may partially account for canines' greater efficiency at scent tracking. [A commentator] says that despite their relatively sluggish speed, the fact that subjects improved with training is noteworthy. 'I think that shows the effect of our distinctively different behavior in actually using this sense,' he says. 'The dog [has] been doing this its whole life, and humans [were] just asked to plunge in the first time they've ever done it.'"
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
that demonstrated that humans can follow a scent trail -- an ability that most had assumed only animals possessed.
Err, I recently smelled something burning. I walked through my house using my nose to follow the scent trail, and locate the single light bulb in the chandelier that had a tiny piece of plastic stuck to it that was burning (from a Christmas decoration).
How do these researchers think I performed this amazing feat? Got out my hound dog and had him sniff around?
Stereo smell. (Score:5, Insightful)
That comes as a surprise to me - our other stereo sense organs (eyes and ears) are placed just about as far apart on our heads as is structurally possible - but our nostrils are really close together. OK - we don't have a really great sense of smell and we don't rely on it at all - but dogs clearly do - and their nostrils are also very close together.
You'd think we (or at least dogs) would have nostrils mounted just below our ears.
Weird.
Re:Stereo smell. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Worst. Smell. Ever. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Much of common life destroys basic senses. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Much of common life destroys basic senses. (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, how you could turn your post from a genuine interesting human experience to a "heck, so *that's* why women are meant to stay at home! They smell!" thing just blows me away. Amazing. o0
Re:Student Dignity (Score:5, Insightful)
We all volunteered (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Student Dignity (Score:1, Insightful)
Smell and memory (Score:2, Insightful)
It's very strong with me, almost to a crazy point. Smelling a fragrance that I associate with someone makes me remember them (almost jolts me) much more than anything else, even seeing a picture of that person.
Re:Duh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Agree no surprises. Richard Feynman documented (Score:3, Insightful)