The Nose Knows Better

[Celebration]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/18/health/webmd/main2278259.shtml

You just have to go to the website. No way a snip of this will do justice to it. I had to choose among the Health, Science and Lounge for posting.

[JDPriestly]

1. Agreed.

Humans can track a scent trail across a field, with all their other senses blocked, a new study shows.

The other day I left my front door unlocked and went to my detached garage for a while. When I came back to the house I noticed that I smelled to see if an intruder had come in while I was gone. I had to laugh at myself. It was an instinctive act, not something I thought about. And it seemed really primitive. I felt quite certain from the absence of the smell of another human that no one had come in during my absence.

[Nihil]

2. Ha!

I noticed myself doing the same thing when I go into the house on
return from a holiday! It does seem to be an instinct that lives
quite low in the stack of the human operating system ... mind you,
that's why perfumes & deodorants work so well I suppose ...
:shrug:

Glad that someone else has a) done that and b) owned up to it! :hi:

[Sequoia]

3. I got very sick once and lost my sense of smell for two years.

Even the doctor couldn't figure out what the problem was at first. I had a CATSCAN and was all stuffed up with gunk. I couldn't take the steroids I was prescribed because it made me even more depressed. I felt off balance and had "scent hallucinations". Camping at Yosemite, smoke was fog to me until I saw the chopper overhead with buckets full of water. Burnt food in the oven and all kinds of dangerous stuff. The last things that I could finally smell when my sense came back was roses and pine trees.