If you want to spray yourself with a mist that might make you smell like part or all of the Grand Canyon, you can try using one of the products manufactured by Air Wick. The company advertises the products with this invitation (and also with videos): America’s national parks are a source of inspiration to all […]
Tag: smell
Elephantine Classification of Human Ethnic Groups
Do elephants discriminate between (and perhaps against) different human ethnic groups? This study addresses that question: “Elephants Classify Human Ethnic Groups by Odor and Garment Color,” Lucy A. Bates, Katito N. Sayialel, Norah W. Njiraini, Cynthia J. Moss, Joyce H. Poole, Richard W. Byrne, Current Biology, vol. 17, no. 22, November 20, 2007, pp. 1938–1942. […]
Making cheese from humans’ foot, nose, armpit bacteria
“Make hay while the sun shines, but make cheese from places where it does not” is the unstated them of a project described in Christina Agapakis‘s Harvard PhD Thesis (and described more colorfully on her web site): “Descriptions of human body odors often overlap with those of cheese; Propionibacterium used to make Swiss cheese is a major […]
Study: Why my baby is less disgusting than yours
When a mother compares and contrasts the stench from her baby’s nappies with that from those of someone else’s baby, the question of disgust arises. The question drove a team of psychologists to do an experiment. Richard Stevenson and Trevor Case, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and Betty Repacholi of the University of Washington in Seattle issued a report […]