There’s no mistaking the odour of burning rubber for the fresh smell after a summer rain, but now new research shows the human nose can distinguish among many more odours than once thought.
People often say that humans can distinguish among only 10,000 different odours. But in fact, the nose can tell apart at least 1 trillion different odours, and possibly many more, the new findings suggest.
“We debunk this old, made-up number of 10,000,” said Leslie Vosshall, an olfaction researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York and a co-author of the study detailed today (March 20) in the journal Science. “It gave humans an inferiority complex about our sense of smell,” she said, referring to the keen sense of smell in other animals.
– www.livescience.com
