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Ant smell
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this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Wait, is that true? Is someone able to smell ants?
There are lots of weird genetic traits. Sneezing triggered by sunlight is another funny one.
Veritasium video on that one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e69XZJ9DEj0
I got the "cilantro tastes like soap" gene personally. Would much rather have gotten the, "Always remember where I left my car keys" gene, or maybe the, "Come up with witty retorts on the spot instead of two hours later in the shower" one.
I love cilantro, but I got the celery tastes bitter and spicy gene. So many people tell me it's tasteless but it has a strong, terrible taste to me.
Celery man. Everyone tells me it has no taste, but to me it tastes like an entire lawn's worth of grass clippings compressed into a stick. Extremely pungent.
Same with cucumbers. They taste awfully strong and bitter to me.
Look up the "TAS2R bitter taste receptor gene family". It's a fun little group of genes that control how well bitterness is detected.
I am a moderate bitter taster. So I do not like celery (mildly unpleasant flavor) and prefer cucumbers that contain the recessive bi gene that stops the production of cucubitacin in the plant. The ones that contain the bt gene, the skin gets too bitter for me. This gene mostly stops the cucubitacin production in the fruit but not the plant.
Yeah I really don't like celery. Cucumbers are pretty good if they're peeled, but yeah they have a very strong taste to me, and the peel is very bitter
Your celery description seems apt to me, but for me it's much less pungent. It's actually super mild for me, so I don't mind it. I actually quite like celery.
Just to signal boost the other guy that sounds a lot like a food allergy friend
Any time someone tells you something is "tasteless" you should feel free to discard all of their food opinions or give them a covid test
Cilantro tasted like soap to me until my wife described it as lemony, and it suddenly tasted different and now I like cilantro. Senses are weird
Cognitive Modulation of Olfactory Processing: Neuron
If I eat cilantro by itself and focus on the idea of it tasting like soap, I can kinds taste it. It still tastes good to me, just with a hint of soapiness. It's not enough to ruin it for me, and I have to be looking for it.
I believe that's all on the same gene
I love cilantro but one time I tasted the soap flavor. I had done a stir fry with cilantro and left the spoon in the still hot pot and there had been some cilantro stuck to the bottom of the spoon that sat there and cooked for as long as it took for the big pot to cool down. Then when I was doing dishes I picked up the spoon and I saw big bunch of cilantro so I ate it and it was horribly nasty and tasted like straight up hand soap. I thought for sure that some soap fell or splashed onto it but no it was just the cilantro. Never happened again either.
The Frech have this good phrase, L'esprit de l'escalier
I have that! Sneezed twice today because of bright sunlight. It can sometimes also be triggered voluntarily by looking at a bright light. You can't trigger it multiple times in a row though. I suspect this is because sinuses need to recover from the shock of the sneeze.
I can sneeze several times in a row if a light is bright enough. I've even triggered it just thinking of the sun, a few times.
Yep same here! It's nice when you feel a sneeze coming on and then it stops, you can kinda force it to happen!
Still can't believe that some people are unable to smell rain coming in the summer!
I honestly love that smell. It's relaxing.
wait, not everyone gets that?
I have sunlight-sneezing, my thoughts are spoken word, I can read in dreams, the dress is gold, and I alway hear "laurel."
What others are there?
Wait, you can read in dreams? The letters don't constantly change?
I have a slightly different version of this. I get sneezing fits when too full. It's genetic and happens to most people on one side of my family. Thanksgiving is always fun.
I sneeze from sunlight, luckily it's only the first time for the day or very bright light.
I have the sunlight sneeze. I would much rather be able to smell ants.
This feels like a shitty superpower what-if.
Maybe not genetically, but fun fact about sneezing-quirks: There exists "Sneezing induced by sexual ideation or orgasm. Source: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=2084455232396039941&hl=de&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&t=1716906331494&u=%23p%3D-Y8j_fJVLLsJ
Wait, I'm not the only one?? Amazing!
Me: -- Seeing bright light -- coughing -- thinking certain sexy thoughts
Brain: "Make her sneeze!"
That'd be me. Nobody else I know does it, either. I try to explain it and they're like "yeah, I try to look up at a light to help sneeze" and that's just not it.
Wait I have that one! My dad has it too, but my brother doesn't. All three of us are colorblind too lol.
Smell is how ants communicate with one another so maybe these ant sniffers will be the first humans who can speak ant.
Ants part of a super-organism often compared to a computer, so probably these people are sniffing their information packets.
https://academic.oup.com/ae/article/61/2/85/1756864
https://www.livescience.com/why-ants-smell-weird
Specifically, the house ~~hippo~~ ant.
*The actual factual paper was actually literally published in 2015, no cap.
So American house ants, rotten coconuts and blue cheese all smell the same. Life is weird.
Uh oh. They smell like blue cheese? That means they smell delicious!
Thats what i was thinking, i love bluecheese!
cant say for ant. but i can smell cockroaches
spoiler
asdfasfasfasfasMe who spent months taking Tupperware boxes full of cockroaches out of the freezer and separating them by hand because our ants were picky eaters: I still smell them, to this day.
Thanks ants. Thants.
I have questions.
just bio major things
The smell like pepper to me. Well, you know how when you crush bricks or rocks it kinda has a peppery smell? It’s that pepper scent.
what bricks are you crushing mon
maybe it's smell of dust, like what you can smell on dusty unpaved road in summer
Nah it’s specifically when they’re crushed. Not gravel smells, that smells different. You never crushed a rock or a brick?
I have, many times, and I don't think I would describe the smell as "pepper." It is sharp though.
100%
I can smell them to the point I know when an area has an abundance of ant hills.
I can, they also taste absolutely abhorrent and ruin food they are in for me. It's a very bitter chemical taste and smell.