Anyone know why we wrinkle our noses at bad smells, and gag on truly horrific ones? I thought at first that maybe the body perceives a foul stench as a poison & wants to get rid of it, but that’s not a good explanation for a nose-wrinkle. Besides, there’s nothing we can really do to get rid of a bad smell except walk upwind, which might be tough to do quickly if you’re heaving. Any ideas?
You have physically uncomfortable reactions to bad smells to keep you from eating or getting into bad stuff- rotten meat, decayed or dead animals, poisonous stuff, etc. Hopefully you’ll get away before you start heaving. The heaving reflex is an attempt to get whatever it is out of your system. The reflex isn’t smart enough to figure out whether you actually did ingest some. Even if you didn’t, the reflex is unpleasant enough to keep you from getting near it again.
Our sense of smell seems to have gotten weaker as we’ve gotten smarter, so it probably isn’t as useful as it once was (say, 200,000 years ago).
Arjuna34
Well, I did a chemistry laboratory experiment yesterday on synthesising Esters and the products for these reactions are primarily acids. If you’ve ever smelled a strong acid, you know that it begins to burn out the mucous membranes in your nose very quickly. The wrinkling nose reaction is very helpful in this situation as it closes of half of the membrane by pressing it against adjacent membrane away fromt he fumes. Of course, the rest conitnued to burn, but If i had not moved away, at least i would still have had some mucous there.
“C’mon, it’s not even tomorrow yet…” - Rupert
If you need a graphic solution, http:\ alk.to\Piglet