Amazing Facts about Our Nose

​Although our sense of smell is used every day, it is built so inherently well in us and often functioned without problems that we do not realize how much it is actually doing for us.
Like every part of our body, each one has their own specific roles and these roles are complex yet fascinating. Let’s find out what amazing facts our nose has.

Humans VS. Animals
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​Although humans are not one of the best creatures with the best sense of smell, we are not too far behind, and are ranked 13th in terms of our sense of smell.
Studies have also showed that we are more sensitive to some scents than other animals. For example, the scent of amyl acetate in bananas could be perceived more easily by humans than rabbits and dogs. We are also more sensitive to the scent of blood than mice as well.
However, basing on the overall olfactory ability, humans would fall behind many animals. African elephants ranked the highest in the animal kingdom for the greatest sense of smell, holding the highest number of olfactory receptors of 1948. This is followed by rats, opossum, cows and Chinese softshell turtle.

Odour Fingerprint
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​We are said to contain 6 million olfactory receptors with four hundred different variety. Research has been conducted to show that people can be differentiated according to our smell as well.
Scientist have yet to figure out the defining factor to identify the differences among people by our scent. However, brain scans are done with positron emission tomography (PET) and found that body odour provides much more information than normal odours.
Furthermore, with our advance computerized system, with just 28 odours registered, an estimate of 2 million people could be identified and 7 million can be differentiated with only 34 odours!

Scent of Potential Partners

​Omitting the visual influence or personality attraction, we could also be picking our partners with our sense of smell. However, our unawareness of it is due to how innately built our olfactory senses are.
We also had it in us to smell out partners who are healthy, which is built instinctively in us to pass on our genes to future generations. This could be supported by a journal ‘Psychological Science’ published in 2014, where an experiment is conducted to display humans’ ability to pick out the people who smell sick.  
Researchers from Canada, McGill University also found that we pick out and feel more attracted to people who has similar genetics to us with our olfactory senses. This can be rationalized biologically that we can recognize our family by smell and also instinctively wants to protect our own gene pool, hence feeling more attracted to people who has similar genetics as us.

Aroma of Emotions

​Does this line, “The person smells dangerous” sounds familiar? Although this often meant in a metaphorical way of implying the impending trouble but research has proven it to be literal as well.
Electrodes testing the sweat samples of people who have watched a happy movie also showed to exude a different scent as compared to people who watched a horror movie.
The smell of emotions is also contagious, where experiments involve the scent of happiness or fear. If a person is feeling happy and watching a comedy movie can exude a scent of happiness and influencing the person near her to feel happy as well. fMRI scans also supported this claim, showing the brain’s amygdala lighted up when people smell sweat from first-time parachute jumpers, as compared to veteran parachute jumpers - alluding that fear is contagious.  

Attend a Perfume Workshop
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