The Evolution Deceit The Perfect System That Perceives Scent
When you take a deep breath, you simultaneously perceive various
smells, for example, from the coffee you are drinking, the food
cooking in the kitchen, the flowers in the vase, and the smoke
outside. And yet you perceive them all individually, because
your nose can analyze each smell it detects in thirty seconds
and thus can distinguish among 3,000 scents. Messages arriving
from billions of scents are transmitted within a matter of
minutes to tens of thousands of cells. The speed involved here
is extraordinary. Several million pieces of data move from one
cell to another in as little as one-thousandth of a second,
never making a mistake. These processes allow you to identify a
smell very quickly. In addition, the identification and
organization of the transmitted data further increases scent
sensitivity. The distinguishing and recognition of smells
further increases scent sensitivity in the nose. (Tim Jacob,
"Olfaction", 2001, http://www.cf.ac.uk/b