How come we do not detest our own smells?

Factual Questions
1

Not sure if this belongs to GQ or MPSIMS.

Ok, I guess it a well known and accepted fact, that fart and poo stink do not smell as awful to their rightful owner as they do to the unwary and innocent others. A man will refuse to enter a recently vacated stall, prefering to wait for the stink to dilute, but he will sit comfortably on the toilet seat however long it takes to finish his job, not exhibiting any strong dislike to the olefactory environment, so long as what is in the bowl is solely his. It is not that we do not “smell” the stink of our poo. We do, but I guess the brain reacts in a manner entirely different than it does when the source is someone else. Why?

Can someone “recognize” the smell of his fart/poo under different circumstances? I say this, because I can. On those few occasions in a crowd, when I had no alternative but to let off one, I could smell my product as it wafted and drifted around me. I confess, I felt mildly guilty at the uncomfortable faces of those around me.

Suppose someone goes around and “collects” the farts of 5 people at random and retains the collected specimens in separate air tight containers marked with their owners’ ids. Now we put the five man in an elevator and without any warning, open one of the containers thereby allowing the contents to disperse in the closed confines of the elevator. Will all the five in the elevator be equally tortured, or will the rightful “owner” look around and wonder why the others are contorting their faces at such a mildly different but familiar odour? In other words, will the owner recognize the product of his bowels even though he is not aware of it in “real time”?

2

I’m just guessing here, but it may be because your body knows where your smells came from and so doesn’t have to be on alert for foreign things which may be a threat to it? The way it stops processing certain cues because it has ruled them routine and not a threat??

3

Well, there is a physical response where your sense of smell acclimates to smells fairly quickly, and just ‘tunes them out’. (I think it’s related to the nasal receptors being at maximum, so no longer sending nerve messages about that smell.) This is why people can work in very smelly locations without problems. Like coroners working on dead bodies, people in paint factories, etc. It smells, and you notice it when you start work, but in a few minutes you don’t notice it anymore.

But about:
[QUOTE=wisernow]
but he will sit comfortably on the toilet seat however long it takes to finish his job,
[/QUOTE]
what would you suggest he do? Leave before the job’s done? Take a break to let the smell dissipate from the stall, and then come back and finish? Doesn’t seem realistic.

4

[QUOTE=gigi]
I’m just guessing here, but it may be because your body knows where your smells came from and so doesn’t have to be on alert for foreign things which may be a threat to it? The way it stops processing certain cues because it has ruled them routine and not a threat??
[/QUOTE]

How come my feces are not a threat to me? Hygenically speaking, I think they are as much a threat to me as anyone else’s assuming of course that the “other person” is normal and healthy. Even so, how does fart fall in this category? Never heard of anyone getting infected because of an innocuous fart.

As an aside, I love the google ad that is coming up:

Fishy Vaginal Odor or BV?

Interesting logic they must have used there.

[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
This is why people can work in very smelly locations without problems. Like coroners working on dead bodies, people in paint factories, etc. It smells, and you notice it when you start work, but in a few minutes you don’t notice it anymore.
[/quote]

I am not talking about getting used to a smell, be it good or bad. My point is more about the difference in the intensity of reaction towards one’s own bad odor as compared to someone else’s. And that goes for other odors too including socks, sweat whatever.

I can bear my BOs without a grimace but expose me to BO from someone else, and I could very well appeal to human rights violation court if there was one that would entertain such an appeal.

Why this huge magnitude of difference? Is it because the body knows the odor is its own because it is happening with the full participation of the brain and the body’s olefactory senses, or is it that the brain has a meachanism that it can recognize its body’s odors anywhere.

Maybe it is that the brain does not allow itself to sense its own odors as obnoxious because that would be counterproductive to the body’s health in that an abhorrence for the odor of its own feces or gas would trigger the body to avoid those acts, which in turn would lead to decline in health.

5

I think it’s because your body substances aren’t a threat to you. The threat we’re talking about is infection. Feces carry lots of bacteria. So does vomit, in the case that the person vomited because of a stomach infection. Farts probably get included because it’s the same smell as feces (your nose isn’t going to figure out that the gasseous part isn’t going to carry germs). Your own don’t threaten you because you’ve already got whatever you’ve got.

But it’s just speculation.

6

I think it’s probably mostly psychological; we learn to tolerate our own stink because we have no frigging choice. Same with stinks encountered when changing the nappies(that’s diapers) of our own offspring; we learn to tolerate it because we have no choice.

Placed in a situation where we have pressing need to tolerate other stinks (dairy farmer, pathologist, care assistant for the mentally handicapped, and historically, dyer, tanner, etc.), we would learn to tolerate those.

7

[QUOTE=Napier]
I think it’s because your body substances aren’t a threat to you. The threat we’re talking about is infection. Feces carry lots of bacteria. So does vomit, in the case that the person vomited because of a stomach infection. Farts probably get included because it’s the same smell as feces (your nose isn’t going to figure out that the gasseous part isn’t going to carry germs). Your own don’t threaten you because you’ve already got whatever you’ve got.

But it’s just speculation.
[/QUOTE]
It’s false; if you eat your own feces, you’ll be just as ill as if you eat someone else’s, generally speaking; fecal flora don’t belong in the top end.

8

Because everybody likes their own brand.

9

To a certain extent, I think we do. Anecdote time:

When I last had a bad bout with the creepy crawlies, I was on the toilet but had to lean over to throw up into the bathtub. After my involuntary personal protein spill, I then get to clean it up - it was early morning, I didn’t want to wake up my husband, and I wasn’t so sick that I clean up after myself. And let me tell ya, the smell was horrendous. I was certainly disgusted, even though the bits of nasty were previously the contents of *my * stomach. But Mangetout’s got the key - I really had no choice, so I dealt with it, disgusted though I was.

10

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
It’s false; if you eat your own feces, you’ll be just as ill as if you eat someone else’s, generally speaking; fecal flora don’t belong in the top end.
[/QUOTE]
I guess I didn’t mean that it itself wasn’t literally a threat. I meant in the sense that since you know where the smell came from and it “grew on you” so to speak, your self knows that it is not a foreign threat, and not one that it has to register.

Snickers, I’m right there with you. The lowest point I’ve been at:

I had some sort of “stomach flu” and was on the pot with diarrhea and it smelled so bad even to me I had to quick wipe and get up and vomit. The force of the vomiting was bad enough to start my nose bleeding. It was The Worst.

11

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
It’s false; if you eat your own feces, you’ll be just as ill as if you eat someone else’s, generally speaking; fecal flora don’t belong in the top end.
[/QUOTE]

So much for my weekend plans.

I understand how much bacteria there is in feces (Qadgop the Mercotan’s expounded on it more than once :)) but aside from plain ol’ gut bacteria, there’s also got to be a risk of passing more serious pathogens. Sure, my own doo still could give me an infection in my upper GI tract if I didn’t wash my hands afterwards, but it’s not going to infect me with cholera. I have to think that the possibility of passing other pathogens besides gut bacteria plays a role here.

12

So, what exactly does “Mangetout” mean if translated to English? Just curious, is all.

13

[QUOTE=Napier]
So, what exactly does “Mangetout” mean if translated to English? Just curious, is all.
[/QUOTE]

“Eats everything” (presumably excluding shit). It’s also the name of a variety of peas.

14

[QUOTE=wisernow]
I am not talking about getting used to a smell, be it good or bad. My point is more about the difference in the intensity of reaction towards one’s own bad odor as compared to someone else’s. And that goes for other odors too including socks, sweat whatever.
[/QUOTE]
Well, first of all, (being the Straight Dope here), do you have a cite to confirm that there actually is such a difference in intensity of reaction? Not just anecdotes, but an actual double-blind type study, with participants ranking the smell of feces from various people, without knowing which sample was their own?

Otherwise, it would seem that this so-called “difference in the intensity of reaction” is, as people have said, just a psychological quirk, rather like a placebo effect.

15

[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Well, first of all, (being the Straight Dope here), do you have a cite to confirm that there actually is such a difference in intensity of reaction? Not just anecdotes, but an actual double-blind type study, with participants ranking the smell of feces from various people, without knowing which sample was their own?

Otherwise, it would seem that this so-called “difference in the intensity of reaction” is, as people have said, just a psychological quirk, rather like a placebo effect.
[/QUOTE]

Is it any less worthy of discussion if it’s “just a psychological quirk”, whatever that means?

16

Its called sensory adaptation and it applies to all stimuli not just smells. Even cones smells can become “tired” after looking a bright colour for a long time. Check out this link to a digital afterimage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage

17

Try leaving the bathroom and then going back in a minute later. You’ll hate the smell you left behind just as much as anyone elses.

18

I’ve had times when a friend told me how bad of an odor I was giving off and she left the room. I told her to pity me, you can’t outrun your own farts.

19

I don’t know. I can see how the whole sensory fatigue or adaptation or whatever thing can explain why you don’t care much about sitting the bathroom surrounded by the stench of your feces, but …
Potential TMI warning…

every one of my (male) friends says that their own gaseous noxious excretions smell GOOD to them, while those from somebody else are just disgusting. Three of them (again, all males, unsurprisingly) actually go out of their way to smell their own farts by holding their hands up to their asses and then scooping the results up to their noses immediately afterwards. How can that be explained by “you stop smelling it after a minute”?