Original photo by Evheniia Vasylenko/ iStock
Smell is one of humanity’s most important, and often overlooked, senses. It’s intimately tied to taste and memory, and plays a pivotal role in detecting danger, whether from fires or rotten food. It may even play a role in how we choose our mates.
One little-known aspect of smell is how it fluctuates throughout the day. According to research conducted by Brown University and published in the journal Chemical Senses in 2017, our sense of smell is somewhat regulated by our circadian rhythm, the internal biological process that regulates a human’s wake-sleep cycle. (If you’ve ever traveled across the ocean, the resulting jet lag is a disruption of this rhythm.)
Oops, incorrect!
It's a fibWhen we’re born, humans can only sense certain smells, such as a mother’s body. However, our sense of smell really takes off at the age of 8, and is usually stable until around age 50. After that, our nose powers decline, and drop off precipitously after the age of 70.
The Brown study analyzed 37 teenagers for a week, and measured their sense of smell against their levels of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. A rise in melatonin meant that the body’s nighttime circadian rhythm was kicking in, essentially saying, “It’s time to sleep.” The results showed that the teens’ sense of smell was at its highest in the evening, around 9 p.m., or what the researchers called the beginning of “biological night.” Conversely, their sense of smell was at its lowest between the hours of 3 a.m. and 9 a.m., when the body has little need for sniffing. Scientists can only guess at why the body kicks its olfactory receptors into high gear at 9 p.m. — it may help humans ensure satiety following the last meal of the day, scan for nearby threats before sleeping, or act as a means for encouraging that aforementioned mate choice.
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The animal with the strongest sense of smell is the ______.
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The animal with the strongest sense of smell is the African elephant (Loxodonta).
Humans are more sensitive than dogs when it comes to certain scents.
The human nose often takes a backseat to other famous sniffers in the animal kingdom. Dogs, pigs, and elephants have nasal biology jam-packed with olfactory receptors, which makes them particularly gifted at smelling scents. But no two odors are exactly alike, and research from Rutgers University argues that the human nose — with our measly 400 different kinds of olfactory receptors — can actually sniff out smells important to humans better than even the most skillful bloodhound. For example, human noses are more sensitive to amyl acetate, a main odorant found in bananas, because ripe fruit was important for our survival thousands of years ago. For dogs, finding such fruit was much less important, and thus biologically deprioritized. Human noses can also sniff out the smell of fresh rain on dirt, a scent known as “petrichor,” better than a shark can smell blood in the sea, likely due to our essential need for fresh water. So don’t write off your sense of smell — instead, take pride in what your nose knows.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
