Passing the smell test

Scientists are sniffing around smell, traditionally the neglected sibling among the five senses. And they are smelling some interesting results.

One study examined some 3,000 people and found that if they were unable to identify smells like fish and peppermint, they were much more likely to die within five years, compared with those who were able to do so. In fact, only liver damage had a higher predictability correlation. So the next time you line up a fortune teller, whether it be with tea leaves, a crystal ball or palm reading as the technique, be on the lookout (or, to be more accurate, on the smellout) for the telltale odour of fish and peppermint. If you can smell it, you know your seer is using science instead of magic and you know your fortune already; and if you can’t, well, you know your answer too. Either way, you don’t need the service.

Shame, really. There may be a lot of gifted psychics out looking for work shortly. Although, of course, if they are gifted, they’ll already know what the future has in store for them and will have made appropriate plans. And if being thrown out of work does come as a surpise, well, maybe they weren’t that gifted in the first place. Sorry to sound so callous.

Another study looked at whether the ability to discern smells varies from culture to culture, after it was determined that earlier studies sampled only English speakers. If you can believe it, English speakers have a very poor ability to describe the scent that is common to bat droppings and ginger root leaf. By contrast, the Jahai people of the Malay Peninsula rainforest easily beat us in that test, using an abstract term that the English language lacks. Similarly, English speakers rank low when asked to identity scents that are culturally familiar to them, like cinnamon, turpentine, lemon and rose.

But perhaps the most intriguing finding involves an experiment in which scent-absorbent pads were attached to various people. Study subjects were then given the pads and asked to rate how attractive the odour was. The subjects tended to rate most favourably the scent of those with whom they subsequently found they had an ideological bond. The conclusion one author derived: similarity in ideology “exerts a biological pull on our attraction.”

Now there’s a finding for the books. No more guessing about whether your potential mate is a big fan of, or turned off by, John Coltrane or Kenny G. Just check your date’s scent—preferably not following the example of your dog, but more discreetly according to established cultural norms. If you like it, you can be reasonably sure you’ll have found a soulmate. Of course, you could simply ask your date about whether his or her affinity is with the Green Party or the Tea Party. If you share the affinity, I’d be reasonably certain the scent won’t be an obstacle—at least, within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

All in all, it looks as if smell is shedding its dowdy status. And surely there is a role for the County in all this. After all, who are you going to call when you are the Royal Ontario Museum and you need to secure the rapid composting of marrow material from the bones of a blue whale being prepared in Trenton for future exhibition? Why, none other than 385 Prince Edward County cows, who produce the highest quality, fastest acting manure —eight triaxle dump truck loads of the stuff. And with our roadways so badly in need of repair, what better place than the County to use as a testing ground to come up with new words to identify the odours that are shared by inadvertently discarded automobile parts and roadkill?

Come to think of it, we already have a ‘Taste Trail.’ What’s to stop us having a ‘Smell Trail’? In fact, when wines are being tasted, don’t people in the know ‘sniff and swirl’ before they ‘swill and spit’? Developing the wine palate is about culitvating smell as well as taste. On our new Smell Trail, we could develop a whole new matchmaking market: wineries would uncork the reserve of as yet unpartnered tasters, who could then be kept at close quarters in order to sample one another’s scent and identify ideological matches. We could bring in Niagara wines when we wanted people to identify a scent that evokes turpentine. Or employ guest lecturers from the Jahai poeple of the Malay peninsula rainforest.

Of course, Wellington stands ready to be at the centre of the County’s new smell tourism surge. What with a mushroom plant—which we would have to rename our ‘olfactory factory’—an abbatoir and a water treatment plant already operating at full tilt, and a biogas farm in the cards, Wellington could come out of this one smelling like a rose.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca