Cuestión de olfato

Bill Hansson, director of the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, tells us that the olfactory sense is actually a survival system with the capacity for chemical translation and intercommunication (encoded chemical messages). This chemical translation makes it possible to perceive changes in the environment, environmental alarms, threats, migratory paths and ideal moments for reproduction. In humans, for example, babies have been shown to smell differently as a survival tactic: due to their sweet, pleasant, and reassuring odor, they were pigeonholed by aggressive adults as non-enemies. A Matter of Smell tells amazing stories from the world of olfactory research: from the tobacco plant that excretes an alarming odor, to mosquitoes that appreciate the smell of sweaty feet, to lilies that imitate the fragrance of horse manure, or to the peculiar smells of plants in the deep sea where anglers orient themselves in total darkness using only their noses. This is an exciting journey through the world of animal, plant and human smells and smells, but also a warning about the catastrophic consequences of pollution created by humans and how it will affect the odorous map of the future.