Your sense of smell may be sharper than you think

This is an automatically translated article.


Human's sense of smell is better than we thought, with the ability to distinguish up to 1 trillion different odors, a number much greater than the ability of sight and hearing. So take better care of your nose to get more benefits from it.

1. How many different smells can the nose smell?


A person's sense of smell can be much more acute than your thinking. Most people think that the human ability to smell is limited to about 10,000 different smells. However, the latest studies have shown that humans are capable of distinguishing up to 1 trillion different odors, which is much larger than the color tones that the eye can recognize.

2. Why is the ability of the sense of smell not appreciated?


Humans tend to not trust their sense of smell because we are very poor at identifying and naming different smells. However, naming smells is not the job of the sense of smell. Instead, the sense of smell evolved to help humans distinguish very similar odors. For example, the smell of food is normal and the food has little signs of going rancid.

Khứu giác giúp phân biệt các mùi khác nhau
Khứu giác giúp phân biệt các mùi khác nhau

3. What does scientific research say?


Scientists assessed the sensitivity of the nose by exposing different groups of subjects to smells with similar characteristics. Most of those tested were able to correctly distinguish between odors in just 54 percent of the time. The study also added that the human sense of smell is so strong that it can distinguish between smells of the same nature up to 90%.
However, compared with other senses, the sense of smell is still underestimated. This is thought to be because the sense of smell only works for the purpose of smelling, while the other senses such as eyes and ears, in addition to the main function of hearing and seeing, also perform many other roles. Moreover, the loss of sense of smell is considered to be of loss of value, while the eyes with color blindness are still very useful to humans.
According to studies, human's sense of smell is much better than we think. Humans have 400 types of smell receptors, compared with only 4 for color vision and about 40 for taste.
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Reference source: webmd.com
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