What’s That Smell???

by Scirish

I have always had an overdeveloped sense of smell. Sometimes that can be a good thing, other times, not so much. It is amazing how certain smells can trigger a memory. For instance, the smell of hot tar reminds me of riding my bike in the summer as a child. The smell of burning leaves triggers memories of Halloween.

Some interesting facts courtesy of “The Smell Report” (seriously, that’s what it was called): “Our smelling function is carried out by two small odor-detecting patches – made up of about five or six million yellowish cells – high up in the nasal passages.

For comparison, a rabbit has 100 million of these olfactory receptors, and a dog 220 million. Humans are nonetheless capable of detecting certain substances in dilutions of less than one part in several billion parts of air. We may not be able to match the olfactory feats of bloodhounds, but we can, for example, ‘track’ a trail of invisible human footprints across clean blotting paper.

The human nose is in fact the main organ of taste as well as smell. The so-called taste-buds on our tongues can only distinguish four qualities – sweet, sour, bitter and salt -all other ‘tastes’ are detected by the olfactory receptors high up in our nasal passages.”

I had heard before that smell was a big part of taste, so I conducted a not so scientific experiment. I put on a pair of those flesh colored nose pincher plugs that one of the kids had used for the pool (did I mention that they pinch?) and cooked dinner. I made one of my favorites: Pot Roast. Usually, when I cook Pot Roast, I am absolutely starved by the time it is done. I have been anticipating all day. Well, I kept the nose plugs on throughout the cooking and also when I ate, the Pot Roast still melted in my mouth, but I couldn’t TASTE it! I took them off and voila, yummy! I think that I shall use the pinchers as a diet aid!

I think that for my next trick, I will try tracking human footprints. If you see “Woman poses as a Bloodhound” in the headlines, that will be me.

So, Owls, how is your sense of smell? Do you have any fond “smell” memories? What about smells that you strongly dislike? (Hate is such a bad word, but Liver would be an example for me.) Feel free to talk amongst yourselves; I have some tracking to do.