How important is our sense of smell?

In the animal world smell seems to be so incredibly important.
In the human world we seem not to concerned about it even thinking that our sense of smell is in some way inferior to that of other less hmmm articulate and sentient animals.

Is it possibe that our sense of smell is by far more effecient and profound than that of any other animal, most of what we smell being subconscious or subliminal.

It could be suggested that the main resaon we connect with people, go places, think things and do things could be put down initially to the sense of smell.

I am not limiting the question to just issues of aroma therapy.

What do you think?

Sense of smell is important for humans when choosing a mate, when telling whether food is good for consumption or not, whether something is dirty/infected or clean, etc. If we didn't need sense of smell, we wouldn't have it.
I know a girl who doesn't have a sense of smell.

(copied from the post in Rats and a maze thread - physics and maths forum)

The sense of smell and information transfer


When we talk of information transfer or ability to digest, store and respond to information I think we underestimate our capacities in this regard.

When you look at your computer screne the internet is brought to you by HTML the information is transfererred very quickly from computer to computer but even this is extremely slow to our sensory capacities.

When you walk in to a room that is full of people, with in milli seconds you have an entire appreciation of that room, with only the main points coming to your attention.

The amount of processing the brain is capable of is enormous by any comparison.

Smell is probably our most subtle sense most of what we smell is subconscious to us. But even I know that if you smell something you like it is amazing how it changes the way you feel. Like walking into a restuarant that cooks really nice food or the smell of another person especially the other sex. The information rate would be billions of bits per second in something more sophisticated than binary or digital languages.

The amount of information available to the rat is also enormous and not just from smell ( of course)

Instinctrive reactions are very smell related I would suggest

Smell and taste are also closely related, and to some extent, dependant on each other.

In addition to detection of sexual pheremones, etc., there are other applications of smell that are still being studied and are not fully understood.

smell ------taste------cravings-----direction----action-----satisfaction of cravings-----smell---taste---cravings---direction etc etc

Thanks to my sense of smell, I can always reduce the effect of floating nicotine....

Quantum Quack you say.....

"It could be suggested that the main resaon we connect with people, go places, think things and do things could be put down initially to the sense of smell."

I don't think this is at all true for there are many people who go through life just fine without the sense of smell. Sight would be the worst thing not to have in my opinion then hearing loss and then taste. But losing all of them or just one you still could manage .

I read once that people who have rhinoplasty can no longer smell certain pheromones emitted by other humans because of the damage to the interior of their nose.

I think that I am not just focussing on smells that we can notice consciously but on smells that are unnoticed therefore subconscious to us.

Not being able to smell a rose's perfume does not mean you have lost the ability to smell entiriely just that of noticable strengths.