Re: Feathered Bloodhounds

[dannj@alphalink.com.au]

Quoting Jura <pristichampsus@yahoo.com>:

> Don't forget, the results suggested that bird sense of smell (barring those
> anomalous vultures) was on par, or slightly better than humans. 
> 
> That's not a high bar to hit. 
> 
> If anything, it sounds like the results are showing that bird olfaction is
> only as pathetic as human olfaction. Overall not a big deal.

The human sense of smell is quite a bit better than most people realise, it's 
just that our reactions 
to scents tend to be on the sub-conscious level. There have been several 
experiments that I know 
of, one of which had human subjects follow a scent trail along the ground 
blood-hound style (head 
down, backside up). Humans faired surprisingly well at following even faint 
scent trails.

Another study found that men tend to tip strippers far more generously when 
they're  in their most 
fertile part of their menstrual cycle. The researchers suggested it may have 
been due to a sub-
conscious reaction to the womens' pheromones.

One thing to keep in mind about this bird study is that they used the number of 
olfactory-related 
genes present in the genome. Not all of those genes are necessarily being 
expressed though.

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Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist              http://geo_cities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia             http://heretichides.soffiles.com
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