How Good Is The Human Sense Of Smell?

We aren't such poor cousins to other animals (like dogs) as we thought. Human noses can detect quite a bit, it turns out.

Our nasal passages have millions of receptors in them. There are about 350 different types of receptors in the human nose, which between them can tell the difference between thousands of smells (people with the best noses can detect about 10,000 different things).

The big difference between us and other animals (such as dogs and their famous sense of smell) is how strong the smell has to be for us to detect it. Whereas dogs can smell traces of stuff that to us seems barely in the air, we can at least tell the differences between different smells as long as the smells are concentrated enough. Plus, we can bring our intelligence to bear in understanding what a smell means (a canine may or may not be able to do this).

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