African Elephants
A recent study has found that the African elephant has the strongest sense of smell in the animal kingdom. Scientists have found that they have the largest number of genes (around 2,000) associated with the sense of smell, around five times as many as humans' and twice as many as dogs'.
Lesser Anteater
The Lesser Anteater is regarded as one of the most foul-smelling creatures in the animal kingdom. Their pungent odour is about 4 to 7 times stronger than that of the skunk. It is possible to smell the lesser anteater up to 50 metres away!
World's Smelliest Substance: Mercaptan | Midland Resource Recovery.
Researchers have ferreted out why the binturong, a threatened Southeast Asian mammal also known as the bearcat, smells like popcorn. The culprit is 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, or 2-AP, the same molecule that gives cooked popcorn its aroma.
Bacteria on your skin cause body odor. It's completely normal to have a natural body odor and isn't necessarily related to how much you sweat. Sweat itself is odorless. Some medical conditions, genetics, being overweight or eating certain foods could make you more susceptible to bad body odor.
Every person has a unique scent. “It's like a fingerprint,” says Johan Lundström, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “There is a large genetic component to body odor. Even trained sniffer dogs have a hard time distinguishing between identical twins, unless the twins are on different diets.”
Scents that humans are particularly attuned to include chemical components in bananas, flowers, blood and sometimes pee. In 2013, Laska and colleagues tested the abilities of humans, mice and spider monkeys to detect urine odors found in common mouse predators.
The World's Favorite Scent Is Vanilla, According to Science.
The human nose is sensitive to geosmin and is able to detect it at concentrations as low as 0.4 parts per billion. Some scientists believe that humans appreciate the rain scent because ancestors may have relied on rainy weather for survival.
The answer has to do with hormones—specifically, pheromones. “Pheromones are chemicals that animals and humans produce, which change and influence the behavior of another animal or human of the same species,” says Erica Spiegelman, wellness specialist, recovery counselor, and author of The Rewired Life.
According to a group of researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK, 2 percent of people (at least in their survey) carry a rare version of the gene ABCC11 that prevents their armpits from producing an offensive odor.
While only 2 percent of Europeans lack the genes for smelly armpits, most East Asians and almost all Koreans lack this gene, Day told LiveScience.
Studies have shown that body odor is strongly connected with attraction in heterosexual females. The women in one study ranked body odor as more important for attraction than “looks”. Humans may not simply depend on visual and verbal senses to be attracted to a possible partner/mate.
It would be amazing if you could sniff yourself and immediately pick up on any emanating odors, but alas, life isn't so simple. According to Lifehacker, it can be quite difficult to detect your own body odors because the receptors in your nose shut down after smelling the same scent for too long.
Male Western Grey Kangaroos give off a strong curry-like smell giving them the nicknames of “stinkers.” noises to communicate with their joey in the pouch. Females are also known to build very strong social and familial bonds that can last a lifetime.
Skunks, easily identifiable by their characteristic black and white striping, are infamous for producing a foul odor when frightened. Although a skunk's spray is known mostly for its robust smell, it can also cause intense discomfort if it gets into a person or animal's eyes.
The binturong, or bearcat, is neither a bear nor a cat, but a shy member of the civet family that lives in the rainforests of Southeast Asia. Binturongs owe their popcorn-like scent to a chemical compound in their urine that also happens to be the major aroma compound in toasted bread and cooked rice.
However, this means that snow on the ground likely contains pollutants from the air, which can affect its scent. So, the next time your FOX Weather App tells you that snow is in the forecast, step outside and take a whiff of the air. You may be able to smell it coming yourself.