Whether it’s freshly baked bread or bacon frying, tempting odours are one way to get your children to come running.
Now, experts have discovered just how speedy our sense of smell is.
Our ability to detect different aromas has long been thought to be a ‘slow’ sense since it relies on our breathing rate – a full breath in and out lasts around 3-5 seconds.
However, scientists have discovered that we can actually detect fine chemical changes within the duration of a single sniff.
The team from the Institute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a unique sniff-triggered device that controlled the delivery of different smells.
Scientists have discovered that we can actually detect fine chemical changes within the duration of a single sniff (stock image)
These odours included chemical compounds that either had apple-like, onion-like, lemon-like or flower-like smells.
A total of 229 participants were tested to see if they could distinguish between two different smells presented to them with precisely measured delays and in varying orders.
They found that when the two odours were presented one after the other, participants could tell the difference when the delay was just 60 milliseconds – 10 times faster than previously thought.
This speed is about a third of the time it takes us to blink – and is similar to how quickly we perceive different colours.
When the two odours were presented one after the other, participants could tell the difference when the delay was just 60 milliseconds – 10 times faster than previously thought (stock image)
Dr Wen Zhou, one of the study’s authors, said a sniff of odours is not a ‘long exposure shot’ that averages out different smells, but instead is sensitive to changes.
Writing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour the team added: ‘Our findings demonstrate that human olfactory perception is sensitive to chemical dynamics within a single sniff and provide behavioural evidence for a temporal [time] code of odour identity.’
A previous study has found the smell of a teenagers’ bedroom – something most parents will be familiar with – really does have its own unique chemical composition.
Researchers from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany compared the chemical composition of body odour samples from 18 infants aged between zero and three-years-old, and 18 teenagers aged between 14 and 18.
The team discovered that teens have a special scent consisting of a mix of sweat, urine, musk and sandalwood.
Meanwhile the infant body odour samples were described as ‘violet-like’ and ‘soap and perfume-like’.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk