FACTORALY - E48 SMELLS

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

We take our sense of smell for granted until it's taken away from us by, oh, I don't know... a global pandemic? Smell is very important, not just for us but for every animal with an olfactory bowl. This episode goes into some detail on the weirder side of a sniff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to another edition of Factorily. Factorily, you say? Tell me something about that. I don't need to. People are listening to this on podcasts. It tells you everything you need to know on the thing. Oh, fine. Well, they're all clued in then, aren't they? They are. They know that we're voiceovers.

Yes, they know that we love random facts. They know that this is all about making stuff that isn't interesting more interesting, or ever so slightly more interesting. And they know that we do it once a week. That's right. Yeah, they will have read all that, so we don't need to tell them. Fine. Well, that saves us a little bit of effort, doesn't it?

It does. And time. We can probably edit this out. Fantastic. Easy. So this week, what are we going to do? Well, this week, there's something in the air. Can you smell that?

I can smell you. I can smell you from here. You've turned on the smeller vision function we're talking about smells that's it that's right i knew i wasn't just waffling on about nothing yeah and the good thing about smells is you can't go well the origin of smells is you can with the name but generally there's been smells for a long time yes i would imagine um i have no proof for this it may be that the the sense of smell has developed over the years from nothing so it may

be that there was a first moment where someone sniffed and went whoa what was that um but i imagine it's it's always been there yes i think it probably has mean, the animal kingdom is full of smelly things. It's just part of who we are, not just mammals, but fish and reptiles. Everything depends really heavily on smell. It does, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. So let's start off with a bit of science. How does smell work, essentially? You sniff, air goes in your your nose somehow your brain turns that

into a smell that that seems like some kind of magic it is magic i don't quite understand it um but a little bit of a search online tells me that there's at least in human beings because that's our key frame of reference yes being one um high up in your nose, just below the brain, sort of sticking between the two, there's a small patch of tissue called the olfactory bulb. Ooh. Now, I love the word olfactory because it sounds like a really, really old factory. Factory. I'm using my old factory.

There's no D. And in the olfactory bulb sits the olfactory sensor neurons. Right. And these things translate the molecules that you breathe in. And everything that smells has tiny little volatile molecules that come off it. Oh, say that again. Volatile molecules. Isn't that enjoyable?

Little volatile molecules that come off whatever the item is that get into the air go up your nose go into the olfactory bulb get sensed by these sensors and um the different sensors that are triggered by the different combinations of those molecules they combine together to decipher what that smell is and what it belongs to. So it's an incredibly intricate process. You know, there are sort of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of these neurons, and some of them get triggered by this smell. Some of them get triggered by that smell. But if you think about it, that's then translated into electrical impulses,

which then go to your brain. Isn't that weird? It's quite clever. It is quite clever, isn't it? But we have about, I mean, if we're talking about olfactory receptors, which is like the thing that you have in the bulb, there are about 400 in human noses. That's quite a few. Which is quite a lot.

I mean, as opposed to, you know, like a thousand in a dog. Okay, that's not quite such a lot compared to the dog then. No. The thing is that I've read stuff that said, you know, dogs have like a thousand times better sense of smell. Right, okay. But the thing that's got the biggest

and best sense of smell is an African bush elephant. Excellent. And everybody seems to be agreed on that. Excellent. I mean, look at the size of the schnoz right two things there firstly how brilliant that you and i have actually come to the same conclusion because often we we go into this and we go what's the biggest largest most impressive whatever and we come up with completely different answers that we've found in different sources but

we have both come to the same conclusion that the elephant has the best sense of smell. Yes. Second, you said, I mean, look at the size of its nose. Turns out the size of a nose has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to smell. Oh. It's all about the individual receptiveness of those receptors. You might be an individual with really bad receptors and a huge nose. And your smell would be no better than someone with a small nose and really active senses. What are we going to do?

I don't know. Let's talk about elephants. What did you find out about the smell of an elephant? So the source that I looked at said that humans had 400 and dogs have 1,000. Yeah. But that elephants have 2,000. Oh, really?

So they're twice as sensitive as even like a bloodhound or something like that. Right, okay, okay. So technically you could use elephants to trace people. You know, like they give a piece of cloth to a tracker dog. You could have like a tracker elephant. I mean, it would be a bit tricky. They're not really known for their ability to sneak, are they? I'm picturing a classic old sort of Warner Brothers or Hanna-Barbera type cartoon

with an elephant with his trunk pressed against the ground, sneaking along, sniffing. Hilarious. I read that an elephant's sense of smell is so good, it can smell water underground from 20 kilometres away. Wow. If it's wandering around looking for water it can smell it that far away um and elephants have been known to be able to to smell the difference between two

particular tribes in kenya oh goodness uh the masai and the camber one of those tribes is likely to kill an elephant the other one is not and an elephant can distinguish the difference between which tribe is nearby and therefore be okay with it or run away from it that's because the sweat of people smells different depending on what you eat and how you feel as well yes so when when you say that a dog can smell fear it literally can because your sweat smells different when you're in a fearful state than in a calm state. You said that an elephant can smell water at a huge distance. I looked at how the distances that animals can smell stuff. That's such a niche thing to be Googling, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, so for example, a polar bear can smell a seal through three feet of snow. Wow. Which is quite, I mean, if you think about it, I mean, cold tends to reduce the amount of smells anyway. Absolutely, yes. So yeah, a polar bear can smell seals. A petrel, not petrel, the bird, can smell food five miles away at sea. Wow. Five miles. And it's only a little bird. Yes. Can smell food five miles away at sea. Wow.

Five miles. And it's only a little bird. Yeah. Yeah. And the sea breezes as well, carrying the odours in whichever direction. Yeah. A Bactrian camel can smell water 50 miles away. Whoa.

I know. 50 miles. That's a long way to smell water. I guess that's not in town. I'm presuming that's in a desert. Yeah, if you were in a town and your nearest source of water was that far away, you'd be in shtook, wouldn't you? You would really be in trouble. The apocalypse would have already happened.

And the camels are the only ones left. And, you know, they talk about sharks can smell blood in the water and all that stuff. Yeah. Apparently, a shark can smell one drop of blood in 25 gallons of water, which I think is not very much. I would have hoped it would have been like in the entire sea. Yes, in the whole of the ocean. Yes, that's what I would. Yes. But apparently it's not as much as you think.

I read, again, different sources. Also different sharks, different sources also different sharks different varieties of sharks have different different abilities so it depends on which shark we're talking about i read somewhere it said um sharks can smell blood in water but somewhere between uh one part in 25 million and one part in 10 billion wow which is quite a big range yeah that that's an awful lot of difference isn't't it? Yeah. Can you imagine the scientists going, okay, all right, we're over here now, we're going to drop the blood in.

Just a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further. Some sharks, their olfactory bulb occupies up to two-thirds of their brain. Wow. If you look at a picture of the human olfactory bulb, it's tiny. It's a small little area between the nose and the brain. Sharks, it actually occupies two-thirds of their brain, so that just shows how important that function is. Wow, yeah, it must be really important. I read that the aquatic creature that has the best sense of smell,

which probably isn't, maybe it excludes sharks, but I read that the catfish has a very, very, very good sense of smell. Does it? But they might have just been catfishing. Oh, this is going to be one of those insert drum sound effect episodes isn't it the worst aquatic creature with a bad sense of smell is in joint place the dolphin and the whale oh um because they don't have a sense of smell at all oh interesting uh they specifically the dolphin and the whale they have blowholes and they use their nasal passages to breathe through their blowhole and therefore

they have evolved over the years to not use their sense of smell because their nasal passages are being used for that purpose instead so they still have the the sensors in the brain but they've evolved over the years that they are now disconnected those sensors are disconnected from the nasal passages because the nasal passages are otherwise occupied. That's amazing. Isn't it? Well done. That's a great fact. Thank you. My work here is done. Cheerio. I've been Simon Wells.

Good night. I discovered that various animals like certain smells. Right. So, for example, cats apparently like valerian. They like what now? Valerian. What'serian it's a smell it's a it's a it's a plant oh i see right okay it's a it's a smell lions like mint do they apparently i mean you know you read this stuff on the internet it might be true it might not be true but it's how it can't you can imagine that in a zoo, they've experimented with stuff and seen what lions like best. And apparently, they like mint.

I can't believe there's mint growing on the savannah where the lions roam. No, no. Well, maybe that's why they like it. It's a novelty. Maybe it is. The thing that made me suspicious of this is that the same article said that camels like tobacco. Oh, come on. Yeah, exactly.

I just thought, maybe this isn't accurate. Maybe they're just taking the mickey. But, you know. But still, I mean, it's interesting to allow our dear listeners to understand the world that we live in and understand how much separation of wheat from chaff that we have to go through in order to bring this stuff. Well the other thing they can do is if we're completely off off the mark yes they can tell us oh yes they can don't hold back please tell us if we if i mean we know

we get stuff wrong believe me we we do know yes if you've if you've actually got a a counter point to any of these facts drop it in the comments on on our socials, go to our website, send us an email, shout at us really hard. I promise we won't turn our nose up at it. Oh, that was good. Some animals have a very good, I mean, you know, in airport security they have sniffer dogs. Yes. a very good i mean you know in airport security they have sniffer dogs yes apparently gerbils are also very very good at um smelling adrenaline are they so you know somebody's nervous about carrying stuff through through the uh nothing to declare yes lane they had they tried gerbils to

like sniff out uh people who are who are being a bit nervous but the trouble is they couldn't tell the difference between people who were nervous flyers and terrorists okay so am i it was mi6 i think they would they were experimenting with it right um and i would love to see how the gerbil identified someone because my my experience of gerbils is that they're a little bit skittish and frantic and run here there and everywhere for no decent reason. Yes. So unless it sort of stands stock still and points like a dog, I'd be interested to know how it identifies an offender. Oh, yes.

This is one of those pointer gerbils. Pointer gerbils. Just stands there with his forepaw up in the air with his nose pointing directly at a person. Yes. But dogs are useful in airports, sniffer dogs. I mean, apparently they once detected a strange smell coming from a suitcase. Okay. And you'd imagine drugs, something illicit going on there.

It was illicit. It was 2,000 baboon noses. I... what? going on there. It was illicit. It was 2,000 baboon noses. What? I've never seen Simon Speechless before, but I think I did it. 2,000 baboon noses? Yes. Smuggled.

Why? I imagine medicinal purposes to China or from some... I guess there is something in a baboon's nose that is believed to be health-giving in some way. Well, that's interestingly odd. I've never heard that before. Isn't it weird?

People are odd. But the dog sniffed out the noses. Yes, exactly. Great. That makes me suddenly think of that old joke, my dog's got no nose. How does he smell? Awful.

That was completely unrehearsed. You're welcome. I had a little bit of a look down smelly food. I really wanted there to exist a definitive rank of which foods are the smelliest. Yes. And it doesn't exist. Oh.

Different sources, different countries, different people, different opinions. But there are some particularly smelly foods out there. One particular food that keeps on recurring as quite high uh contender for the smelliest food is actually a type of cheese oh i was expecting kind of fruit but you crack on oh okay oh we'll come to your again different different whatever we'll come to your fruit um i i discovered there's a a type of french cheese called uh view Boulon and researchers at Cranfield University declared that this is the world's smelliest cheese and quite possibly

the world's smelliest food stuff in general. The French have banned the public eating of this particular cheese because it is so, so smelly. It actually makes people feel ill. And there are actually a couple of cheeses that have been banned from being consumed on public transport.

In France? In France, yeah. Wow. I mean, that must be properly smelly. It must be, mustn't it? Obviously, Swedish surstromming comes up every now and then, which is fermented herring. Yes. I've actually, I very nearly got to taste it, but i couldn't get close enough it was just so really yeah wow um and there

are quite a few countries that use um fermented beans of different types um in their cooking and those are apparently quite quite smelly so fermented food seems to be the smelliest um and that one particular cheese as well so tell me about your fruit uh it's called a durian right uh it looks just like a jackfruit i don't know if you know what jack it's like a like a dimple prickly kind of yes thing it's quite big it's about the size of a rugby ball how is it and it's quite expensive and it smells like old socks i mean that's exactly what I'm looking for when I buy a fruit. I'm looking for something that's ridiculously pricey and terribly smelly. Okay, well, apparently, according to research, it contains 44 different chemical compounds that produce aroma.

And three are not found anywhere else in any other natural substance. No way, really? Yeah. And it's the combination of these compounds that make this thing smell like old socks. I mean, it kind of smells like honey with sulfur and caramel and rotten eggs and rotten cabbage and roasted onions and rotten fruit. It just smells like everything. Is it?

Do you think do you think people are just doing this for the challenge you know i've got mates who who order the hottest spiciest food at an indian restaurant just for the bravado of saying i ate i ate that do you think it's that do you think that's exactly what is going on with the durian fruit i mean when when you see them in fruit shops they get that it's so so the smell is so terrible. They actually keep them in glass boxes. Really? Wow. And it's super expensive. I mean, the most expensive durian ever sold was $48,000.

Oh, my goodness. $48,000 for one fruit? For one fruit. And no two of them taste the same. Every single one tastes slightly different. Just because of the mixture of these particular compounds. Yeah, and apparently they're quite difficult to grow. Okay. So it's difficult to grow, it's really expensive, and it smells terrible. But people... I want one now. I want one. You've just convinced me the scarcity of it.

I discovered a dish served in China called century egg. Oh, is that like the hundred-year-old egg thing? It's named the century egg to imply the fact that it's really old. It's actually not. It's several months old. Okay. But still, pretty old. You get a hard-boiled egg, and you preserve it in a mixture of clay, ash, salt,

and a few other bits and bobs, and you leave it there for several months and when you cut it open it's jet black, like the white of the egg has turned completely black and the yolk has turned this sort of syrupy golden orange colour

And somebody has decided to taste that and see what it tastes like Yes, yes There are no official records of the comment that they made, but I understand it smells. I can only imagine. Shall we turn our attention from things that smell horrible to things that smell nice? Oh, yes, please. Go on.

I mean, perfume is obviously a big thing that smell nice. Oh, yes, please. Go on. I mean, perfume is obviously a big thing. Of course. And perfume's in so many things. You know, everything from perfume to washing up liquid to practically everything that you smell is probably smelling that way because somebody has decided

that it should smell that way. Yes. Soap, detergent, airspray. Yeah. But not just that. I mean mean like hotels oh i see oh right yes okay so so so often it's not just the things that you that it's in it's also things that are around you so for example um the sheraton hotels if you go anywhere in the world to a sheraton hotel it'll smell slightly of fig and jasmine. Because they put that into the air conditioning. Nice.

So that's like the signature smell of a Sheraton. Wow. And similarly with the Westin group. Right. They use like a white tea type smell. Oh. And these things exist in infusers dotted around the place presumably yeah well they yes they sort of that they can you can sort of insert it into the air conditioning system so that the whole place smells of right of the same smell so when you go into a hotel you go oh that smells really nice i've been here before right okay and and i mean some hotels go go way too far because if you stay at a mont

carmel hotel for example they have, they have scent butlers. Right. So you tell your scent butler what sort of smell you would like in your room. Oh, fantastic. And they create something that is individual to you and your room. Do you know what? I mean, that sounds ridiculously opulent, but I could kind of get behind that. I really love smells. I'm particularly sensory

in the the smell department whenever i go to a pub or a restaurant and i visit the men's room and they have a particularly nice hand soap i'll just spend the rest of the evening occasionally smelling my hands trying not to look too peculiar um i think you can tell a lot about a venue i think you can the fragrance of their hand soap. Yes, definitely. Absolutely, every time. It's really important. It's like when you go to some hotels and they've got the stuff you steal when you leave the hotel.

The stuff you take with you because it's purposefully yours. Oh, yes. Sorry. But generally, that should smell of that hotel. Yes. Memory and smell is very interesting because smells evoke more memories than practically anything else. Yes. They've done some research where they gave people crayons of any age and said smell the crayon.

And as soon as they smelled wax crayons, they went straight back to school in their head. That's brilliant. I've always thought this myself, that there's a particular smell for me, chimney smoke know the smell of a log fire burning um there's one i still can't identify it but there must be one particular type of wood that gives off a particular smell yes and whenever i walk past a house or a pub that's generating chimney smoke of this one particular variety i am instantly back in a particular place at a particular time in my childhood that's associated with positive memories and positive emotions. And this is actually a thing. I mean, everyone knows it's a thing because everyone experiences this.

But scientifically, you said about all the different parts of the brain that are involved in processing smells. Two of the main parts of the brain that are involved in that are the amygdala and the hippocampus. And one of those two, can't remember which, is responsible for processing emotions. And that's the only part of the brain where emotions are processed. And it also happens to be a part of the brain that's involved in processing smells yes so you the smell comes in that part of the brain is triggered it therefore associates very very rapidly with the memories and particularly with emotion based memory about 75 i think of emotions can be triggered by by smells about three that's incredible isn't it so it not only triggers the memory of of something good from your past it

also triggers the emotion of really, really wanting that thing. And how you feel about it. How you feel about it, yeah. So you smell, for instance, for me, fresh coffee. You smell fresh coffee. And you don't just go, oh, that's interesting. I smell coffee. You go, oh, I really want coffee now.

Or I really want baked bread. Or I really want that particular food stuff it triggers an emotional response rather than just a rational one yeah absolutely i mean that i the smell of a good cigar takes me right back to when my i was like well in my youth surrounded by uncles and uncles would always smoke cigars so yeah so cigar smoke to me equals uncle isn't that great equally my granddad used to smoke um gold block pipe tobacco and i can i i've never tried it myself but somehow that memory from six-year-old simon yeah remembers what the smell of gold block tobacco is and i can identify if i if i walk through a line of people smoking pipes very unusual scenario to imagine i would be able to

pick out the one that's smoking gold block because it's that it's that ingrained in me it's amazing that sort of smell library in yeah in your brain yes that triggers all these things and you were right you know you're talking about the smell of bread yes i mean there are things you can do to sell stuff using smells. Like, for example, if you're selling your house, you're supposed to bake some bread so that the smell of freshly baked bread permeates your place so that you can make people who are coming there go, oh, this smells healthy and fresh and nice. Apparently, you can do the same thing by spraying furniture polish on a radiator.

Oh, really? That's clever. Or putting on a fresh pot of coffee. Yes. It makes it feel homely, doesn't it? It does. It makes it feel lived in. But if you work in like World of Leather or something like that,

or you want to sell furniture, actually, if you want to sell wooden furniture, if your shop smells of leather and cedar, then it feels like it's more like natural and some craftsman has been in there with with a hammer and and yes and chisel yes to kind of just make make the furniture and similarly um if you're in a bookshop apparently people stay longer in bookshops if they smell of um floral smells and citrus smells oh really yeah isn't that clever one of the most famous uses of of smells to to make things attractive is that you know that new car smell yes yes but actually sometimes you want old car smell so for example in a rolls royce ifoyce, if you're buying a Rolls-Royce, what they do is they've actually worked out how to make it smell like a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud from 1965.

And they spray this under the seats. It lasts about six weeks. That is incredibly specific. Oh, yeah. Wow. Actually, I once tried to – I'm into old cars. Sure. And I once went to a perfumer and asked them if they would try and recreate the smell of the car that I have. And we got close.

Really? But then I thought, well, who's going to wear this as actually as a kind of scent? And I thought, well, it's not really for wearing. It's for like a – you can use it as like a room fragrance. Yeah. To make your house smell like an old car so um are there any world records uh about uh smells oh you know i love a world record or two i do um yes i've got i've got one in particular uh the one record i found really interesting was for the uh largest number of feet smelled over a period of time.

Okay. Now, this record goes to someone called Madeleine Albrecht, who was an employer at a research facility in Cincinnati, Ohio. This is starting to make a bit more sense now. Isn't it yeah yeah um and she was conducting tests for uh dr scholl who's the the company that make um insoles and things yes this is this is where i thought you were going when you said feet okay so this wasn't a deliberate attempt at a record right let's see how many how many feet i can sniff in in half an hour yeah this was purely the fact that she had worked at this lab for 15 years.

She was working on products for Dr. Scholl, who make sprays to go in smelly shoes and scents for insoles and things like that. She worked there for 15 years, and she had to smell feet and armpits and all this sort of thing. And over her career in that 15 years, she sniffed approximately five and a half thousand individual feet. Okay. In an entire career, I can kind of believe that. Yeah. Yeah. So she holds

the record for the greatest number of feet smelled. I imagine if someone really felt inclined, they could probably go and break that record in a shorter period of time. Shall we do it? You and me, let's do it. Well, that's all the facts that I have to bring about smell. I think the topic has gone off slightly. There's a whiff of completion in the air. I think the sweet smell of a successful podcast. Thank you all for listening. Please come again next time.

Please like and subscribe and tell all your friends. Please give us a wonderful five-star rating. Oh, please. And we will enjoy your company hopefully the next time on the next episode of

Factorily. Goodbye for now. Bye now.