Nose can detect one trillion odours
www.bbc.com
The human nose is much more powerful than we thought, according to a new estimate.

The human nose can detect one trillion different odours, far more than we previously thought, say US scientists.

Until now, the long-held belief was that we can sniff out about 10,000 smells.

New estimates published in Science, external suggest the human nose outperforms the eye and the ear in terms of the number of stimuli it can distinguish between.

Researchers at the Rockefeller University say we use only a tiny part of our olfactory powers.

The human eye uses three light receptors that work together to see up to 10 million colours, while the ear can hear almost half a million tones.

Until now it was believed the nose, with its 400 olfactory receptors, could detect only about 10,000 different odours.

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    I have my doubts on this. Burnt electronics smell exactly like a burnt tick off of a dog to me. You’d figure the smells would be distinctly different, but not in my experience.

    That’s just one random example I can think of off the top of my head. I dunno, maybe that’s just me though. 🤷‍♂️

    • airrowOPMEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      I had my doubts too, I was wondering if anyone can give any insight on how they tried to estimate the amount? (article is a decade old!)

      Yet with colors and sounds we know there are many

      I guess the idea is probably we have so many known chemicals we can determine have distinct scents, and we know of however many more chemicals and they probably estimate that multiplying the known chemicals gives us an estimated trillion+ known possible smells?