I am reading Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses, currently. I’m only on the first segment, which is about smell. It’s full of hella-interesting facts about this all-too-often overlooked sense! Like:
- heredity determines the shade of yellow of the olfactory area — “the deeper the shade, the keener and more acute the sense of smell”
- “smell was the first of our senses, and it was so successful that in time the small lump of olfactory tissue atop the nerve cord grew into a brain”
- “babies can smell their mother entering a room even if they can’t see her; mothers of school-age children can pick out t-shirts worn by their own child (not true for fathers)”
- “violets contain ionone which short-circuits the sense of smell — the flower continues to exude fragrance but we lose the ability to smell it after a moment or two (wait another minute or so and you will get another waft before it fades again)”
- “an odor must first dissolve into a watery solution our mucous membranes can absorb before we can smell it”
- “only humans sneeze with their moths open and a sneeze expels the air at 85% the speed of sound, fast enough to scour bacteria and other detritus from the body (the sneeze’s goal)”
- “perfume smells strongest just before a storm in part because moisture heightens our sense of smell and in part because the low pressure makes a fluid as volatile as performe spread even faster”
Fascinating!
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