By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
It wasn’t exactly scientific, but the simple test did prove how powerful the sense of smell can be. At the request of Dr. Paul Moore, a professor of biology at Bowling Green State University, the roomful of adults plugged their noses, put the jelly beans in their mouths, started chewing and tasted nothing.
The second their released their nostrils, the flavors came rushing in – apple, cherry, cinnamon.
“As soon as you let go of your nose, you know,” Moore said to the members of the Bowling Green Kiwanis Club during their weekly meeting last Thursday.
Moore has been studying the sense of smell for 30 years.
“Every animal makes a lot of decisions based on smell,” including humans, he said. We often aren’t even aware of it, but smells play a big role in most people’s lives.
Far back in history, the sense of smell was necessary for survival. “Odors played an essential role if you lived or died,” Moore said. Bitter odors would warn people the food was poisonous or meat had gone rancid.
“It’s the most ancient sense we have,” he said. And the least explored. “It is the last frontier of the brain.”
Unlike colors or noise, odors are more multi-dimensional and harder to define. “Odors don’t lie on a linear spectrum,” Moore explained.
Odors are sometimes used to influence people’s behavior – often without them knowing. For example, it’s long been a tactic when trying to sell a house to add the smell of fresh baked items – with chocolate chip cookies being the best, Moore said.
Auto dealers are now “branding” their dealerships with odors that potential buyers find appealing.
There are “power odors” that are comparable to a “power suit” in the business world.
Unlike sight and hearing, which call on the thinking part of the brain, the sense of smell calls on the subconscious. Smells evoke emotions and memories stronger than any other sense, Moore said.
“You feel about it,” he said. “It’s almost like you have no control over it. They bring up these really rich, vivid memories.”
Moore told of a man who lost his wife in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He found great comfort in spraying her perfume on her pillow. The scent evoked a powerful emotional connection.
And unlike imperfect vision which can be corrected with glasses, and failing hearing that can be improved with hearing aids, there is no cure for people who can’t smell.
“We have no way to fix the loss of smell,” Moore said. It has been found that people who lose that sense often experience depression.
Moore told of studies performed in Germany where the subjects were asked to rate women in photographs. The people in a room with a pleasant rose smell rated the same women much higher than those people viewing the photos in a room with an unpleasant odor.
The same conclusion occurred when the subjects were asked to judge the competency of the women in the photographs. The subtle smells affected the people in ways they didn’t even realize.
Moore also talked about animals and their sense of smell. Eighty percent of a dog’s decisions are based on its nose, he said. Some dogs are being trained to smell certain diseases or oncoming seizures.
But oddly enough, dogs cannot smell the spray from skunks, he said. In their attempt to lessen the skunk smell, humans actually make it worse by bathing their dogs and triggering the compounds that create the odor. “If you wash your dog, it activates it and makes them smell even worse,” Moore said.
Our diets and physiology combine to create the odors we emit. The impact of those smells is great with creatures like catfish, who don’t recognize each other if their diets have been changed.
Moore’s specialty is studying crayfish and their sense of smell. He described them as “mini lobsters” with 12 appendages that smell odors. “They are essentially living tongues in water.”
As crayfish fight and form hierarchies, they recognize their rankings based on their sense of smell. They can tell each others’ social history, gender and reproductive status through smell.
The crayfish have bladder openings under their eyes. “These guys walk up to each other and they literally have pissing matches,” Moore said.
The chemical signals sent by their odors make some subservient to others.
Humans also send out signals through scents. When afraid, people produce “a cloud of fear around them” through sweat glands. That scent can make others around them feel afraid, without being aware of the smell.
