Complete ‘nonscents’: Who said humans have a poor sense of smell?

Our sense of smell may not be as inferior to animals as thought, and may even be at par with the sniffing power of dogs, according to new research that busts a myth which has survived for the last 150 years.

Scientists reviewed existing research, examining data and delving into the historical writings that helped create the long-held misconception that human sense of smell was inferior because of the size of the olfactory bulb.

“For so long people failed to stop and question this claim, even people who study the sense of smell for a living,” said John McGann, associate professor at Rutgers University in the US.

“The fact is the sense of smell is just as good in humans as in other mammals, like rodents and dogs,” said McGann.

Humans can differentiate between maybe one trillion different odours, which is far more, than the claim by “folk wisdom and poorly sourced introductory psychology textbooks,” that insist humans could only detect about 10,000 different odours, he said.

According to McGann, 19th century brain surgeon Paul Broca is the culprit for the falsehood that humans have an impoverished olfactory system.

This an assertion even influenced Sigmund Freud to insist that this deficiency made humans susceptible to mental …read more