Thursday Thinking – “I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.” Walt Disney

I’m having a hard time thinking of anything but the smell of a dead mouse that is somewhere in our house.  I’m thinking it’s behind the kitchen cupboards since he nibbled on a Big Hunk candybar on top of the fridge before he . . . . before he began to smell . . . and he's not behind the fridge or the cupboard drawers.  

Here are a dozen or so interesting thoughts on the subject of smell to think about: 

1. Humans are able to distinguish over 10,000 scents.
2. Each person, except identical twins, has his or her individual smell.
3. One in 1,000 people are insensitive to the smell of skunks.  (Calvin is one of them . . . oh, I shouldn’t say that is insensitive, he is highly sensitive . . . he loves the smell of skunks.  It reminds him of bow hunting.)
4. Smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than taste.
5. Ninety percent of what is perceived as taste is actually smell.
6. Ninety percent of the women who were tested identified their newborns by smell after being exposed to them for only 10 minutes to 1 hour.  All of the women recognized their baby’s smell after they had been exposed longer than 1 hour.
7. By as early as 3 days a baby can discriminate between his own breast-feeding mother and another lactating mother.
8. Women, particularly women of reproductive age, have a more acute sense of smell than men.
9. Dogs, horses, and women can detect the “scent of fear.”  (Female subjects wore underarm pads while watching a scary movie or a neutral movie.  The pads were presented to a panel of women who were able to discriminate between  fear and non-fear sweat pads.  How would you like to have been on that panel?)
10.  We tend to prefer the smell of people who have different smells to our own and tend to be repelled by people whose smell is similar to our own.
11. A Chicago lab found that the women in their study rated human odor more pleasant than common household odors.
12. Around $24 billion is spent annually on scented products in the U.S.
13. Experts believe that sperm may smell their way to the egg.
14. People are very sensitive to the smell of green pepper.  It can be detected when it is mixed with air at only 0.5 parts per trillion.

(This information was compiled by Tim Jacob)

I think people are very sensitive to the smell of decaying mice, too.

But three smells that I do love are lilacs, bread baking, and Johnson's baby lotion.  How about you?  What are three smells you love?