Researchers Isolate the "Smell of Human Death" 49
sciencehabit writes: In the wake California's forest fires, cadaver dogs had to distinguish between burning homes, charred forest, and even other dead animals to pick up the unique scent of human victims. A new study reveals how they might have done it: Decomposing humans seem to release a unique chemical cocktail, one that scientists might be able to use to better train cadaver dogs and even develop machines that could do the same job.
It's The Poop (Score:1)
Our poop (and the related gases that are released after death) smells different because we eat so much trash.
Researchers Isolate the "Smell of Human Death" (Score:2)
Not according to the article posted.
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Death doesn't smell like poop. Death smells, well, like death. Humans have a unique biochemstry and diet, this contributes to the smell when dead. I, like some people, have a very, very sensitive nose (I could probably be a cadaver dog it I wanted to). When you realize that individuals and families have unique smells (which has been scientifically proven), then you have to see that the 'aroma' of death is multi-layered and has many components.
Effects on Human Subjects (Score:2)
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Rotting meat smells foul wherever it came from. Most people wouldn't hang around to analyse the bouquet and try and figure out if it used to be Granny.
in related news... (Score:5, Funny)
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I can't believe people eat puke flavored jelly beans. I didn't believe the rumor until I visited their showroom/store. Baffle. They also have poop flavored.
I wonder if it was discovered by accident? Never mind, I'll leave that trivia in the Goatse TMI lock-box.
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And Bertie Bott's Beans are a homage to a Monty Python sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
How about we create detectors.... (Score:2)
Put them in every house and on every street corner, so if anyone ever dies unexpectedly, the authorities will be alerted promptly.
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...to verify their work.
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"But I'm not dead yet! I don't want to go on the cart!
"I'm sorry, Sir, our detector says you will be stone cold in a minute. Up you go, get on the cart."
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I've heard worse ideas, sort of.
Of all the things I would mount on cop cars, this is at the top of the list, above IR cams and way above plate readers
Dead People? (Score:4, Interesting)
Kind of smells like a raw roast you left out before you went on vacation.
I was a Fire Fighter for 12 years before moving on, seen and smelled a few dead bodies, rotting flesh is rotting flesh.
And if you have lived on a farm and had to deal with dead cows... Same thing.
The flies... OH MAN THE FLIES...
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The scientist in this study kept jars of different types of flesh, including pig, rabbit, turtle and mole, and let them decompose. She sampled the air from their jars, to see which particles only appeared in decomposing human flesh, and not in that of other animals.
The flies... OH MAN THE FLIES...
On a dairy, it's not the dead cows that attract the most flies....
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Every dead animal has its own scent as it decomposes. Drive in an area where roadkills are common and you will notice that quickly. It is easy to discern the species before you see it after you have learned the various scents.
Re:Dead People? (Score:5, Interesting)
"The flies... OH MAN THE FLIES..."
I got that beat:
The first warm day in May of 1966, after a month of unrelenting rain, a peculiar, somewhat musty, somewhat sweet, smell permeated the house that we had just rented in Rural California.
Dad takes a sniff, pronounces "Dead Cow".
This I just had to see for myself. (And smell...)
Vickie and I, (Vickie was a black mutt of indeterminate ancestry who bore an uncanny profile resemblance to Queen Victoria in Mourning.), found it on the neighboring Ranch, about a half mile in, underneath a fallen Oak Tree.
It was black and white and very, very, bloated. It had been there a while, and the cold rain had kept it reasonably fresh.
Note here: This was a Tax Cow. Ranches had to maintain a minimum number of Cows to maintain "Agricultural Preserve" Tax Status. One cow for every forty acres or so. A scam of course- all that Ranch Land was already designated R1 Residential; they started building houses there four years later.
Vickie was delighted- Her first Dead Cow. The flies didn't bother us much; they had more important matters to deal with.
Vickie grabbed something on the belly, tugged, and the Cow exploded. Oh, the Smell, and... and...
Yellow Jackets use that time of year to found new nests in the rapidly cracking California Adobe soil. But why do that when there is a perfectly good Dead Cow recently come onto the market?
I have never run faster in my life. Those Yellow Jackets were _pissed_.
Vickie followed. Whatever it was she had yanked, she wanted to keep. So she stopped maybe every fifty yards or so, and argued with the Yellow Jackets about the finer points of Ownership.
I didn't get stung. (Good thing- Allergies...) Vickie finally made it home with her Prize, and a persistent cloud of Yellow Jackets.
She stayed outside.
Eventually, she threw up, and we had another swarm of pissed Yellow Jackets to deal with. She must have swallowed a hundred of them, whole.
We called the Sheriff, who called Animal Control, who called the absentee Rancher, and they informed him that a Dead Cow was _his_ problem.
A Bulldozer later became involved.
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This is gold :)
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Goth Perfume? (Score:5, Funny)
Delivered in a Nine Inch Nail (Score:2)
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Re:Goth Perfume? (Score:4, Funny)
Some smells are universally abhorrent.
Axe body spray.
Re:Goth Perfume? (Score:4)
It's also concentration- and context-dependent. Putrescine, for example, is found in a lot of foods (in parts-per-billion quantities). Cheeses include both putrescine and cadaverine; the distinction between "ferment" and "rot" is kind of arbitrary. Without those flavors, the cheese would taste different. The small amounts are not automatically repulsive.
A number of compounds are pleasant in tiny doses and noxious in larger ones. They're not even identifiable as the same; people treat them as entirely different. My favorite example is butyric acid, which smells like vomit in concentration, but like butter when dilute. Another (and I'm afraid the exact molecule is escaping me) smells like either honey or cat urine, and is found in both.
cadaver dogs (Score:2)
The cadaver dogs in Resident Evil were terrifying! And Will Smith's cadaver dog in "I am Legend" made me cry.
Will be used against crowds I expect (Score:2)
The rise of the killer machines (Score:3)
They want to make machines which seek out the smell of dead humans? What could possibly go wrong.
One small logic glitch and the whole damned robot army will suddenly know just how to make that smell they were sent out to locate.
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Researchers Isolate the "Smell of Human Death" (Score:2)
McDonald's (Score:2)
Dead people smell better than McDonald's burgers.
Not the first time this was done (Score:4, Insightful)
Putrescine[3] and cadaverine[4] were first described in 1885 by the Berlin physician Ludwig Brieger (1849–1919).[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Honey I'm home!" (Score:2)
"Honey I'm home!"
"What did you do today?"
"We isolated the stench of death."
"That's nice."
Are we born knowing that smell? (Score:1)
I lived in an apartment building years ago where the cops had to break in a door to discover a dead man. Everyone that walked into that building KNEW it smelled like dead human. It wasn't merely heady whiffs of the cadaverine/putricine/etc. I think there's something inborn by which we are aware that a certain smell means a human kicked the bucket. I'd never smelled it before that day, all the dead people I'd encountered were in funeral homes, etc. But as soon as the smell hit my nose I knew what it was even