Despite previous estimates that spoke of 10,000 smells, a new study developed by Rockefeller University (USA) has determined that human beings are capable of distinguishing up to 1 billion different smells . The human nose is more powerful than we thought.
The study, which has been published in the journal Science , explains that the human olfactory system can detect more than the 10,000 previously specified odors, since our nose is able to discriminate odors very easily .
To reach this conclusion, the researchers carried out an experiment with 26 volunteers and 264 pairs of different odors but with varying degrees of similarity divided into three groups and each group containing 10, 20 or 30 different chemical components (with molecules responsible for giving smell to the orange, anise or green mint, among others). Then, they gave three bottles to each participant: two of them had the same odor and another contained a different odor with the same number of components but with different degrees of similarity. The participants were asked to distinguish which smell was the one that did not match.
When analyzing the results, they found that the greater the degree of similarity in the composition of the odor, the more difficult it was for the participants to distinguish the bottle with a different odor ; that is, when the mixtures shared more than half of their components, fewer volunteers were able to differentiate them. Finally, the researchers calculated the total number of mixtures that could be distinguished by human smell and determined that they could be up to 1 billion.
