7 Amazing Facts about Your Sense of Smell ...

This was one that I wasn’t surprised to hear. I can recall many women in my family who have mentioned the presence of odors that none of the men could detect. However, I’m willing to bet that some of those mysterious smells were picked up by the guys as well, but they just didn’t want to admit it. They either didn’t admit to smelling anything odd or blamed it on the dog.

I’ve noticed this fact first hand with my grandparents. I remember my grandmother commenting once that the roses in her yard didn’t have a strong scent like they used to. I thought they smelled exactly the same. I didn’t want to bring up the fact that my grandmother’s declining sense of smell might actually be the culprit.

80 percent of what you taste is due to how good your sense of smell is. When you have a cold or a stuffed up nose, have you ever noticed how nothing seems to taste good? This phenomenon is due to this little fact right here.

A person’s body odor increases once puberty hits, which tend to be what is used to attract mates. Supposedly it’s more of a male thing. When a woman reaches puberty, she gives off a scent that draws guys to her. I always thought this had more to do with hygiene and a little bit of perfume! Apparently a guy’s sense of smell heightens when he reaches puberty as well, so he subconsciously picks up on a female’s new ‘scent’.

I found this fact surprising, since I thought a person would be able to smell things much better as soon as he/she woke up. It’s a new day, you haven’t been inhaling random smells throughout the house and town, and so wouldn’t that give you a fresh slate to work with? I guess not.

This intake of smells can come from an area no larger than a postage stamp too. I didn’t know that many scents could even fit in that small of an area, let alone be picked up by the human nose. I think that’s pretty amazing stuff!

Have you ever picked up an aroma that made you remember a specific event from your childhood? If you have, then you’ve experienced this fact in action. There was even a study performed in Germany where people were put in a room scented with roses to play a game which involved matching cards. As the group slept, some individuals were given a whiff of roses and others weren’t. The next day when the same game was played and the cards were placed in the exact location as the day before, the test subjects who received the whiff of the roses in the night could remember where more of the matching cards were than the other test subjects could.

There are so many cool things about a person’s sense of smell, as well as all the other senses. Have you heard any interesting facts about a human’s sense of smell?

Top Photo Credit: Cristiano Betta