I have a friend who can smell cockroaches no joke. We always take her restaurant suggestions very seriously.
Ant smell
Submitted 4 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/fd1e5c2f-25ef-48c7-b3a2-e8b4955d7ea9.jpeg
Comments
Humana@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
MehBlah@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can smell ants and cockroaches. I can also smell when someone has been in my house hours after they leave. Its annoying as hell to have this sense of smell since its considered rude to point out that someone stinks. To me its like they are screaming in a small room.
Lurker@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
I recently had to close my store for an hour, because I was the only one working and couldn’t breath due to one customers bad hygiene. People treat me like I’m overly sensitive or making up my discomfort, but to me it feels like being suffocated.
Also I can totally smell roaches, they smell worse than any other thing in existence. Never smelled an ant though. Did not know that was possible.
samus12345@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
VicentAdultman@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can smell cockroaches and periods. It’s weird, but I can for some reason
TheFriar@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I have a good sense of smell but…that sounds more like cripplingly good
intensely_human@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
My sense of smell is very sensitive. Like I can detect people have been there by smell too, and often who it was. But I don’t think I’ve ever smelled ants or cockroaches. Thank god too.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I’m one of these people. I can smell an apartment infestation from the front door, every time.
And yes, restaurants always get the “sniff check” before we sit down. No-go odors are:
- bleach
- pine-sol (amonia)
- heavy perfume (think “Glade plugin-in”)
- insects (roaches, etc)
- pet odor (wet dog, litterbox)
- sewage (usually a dry floor drain but that’s still not okay)
The first two are obvious attempts at covering up something worse with “clean” smells, and/or the staff has no idea what cleaning things actually means. And they obviously don’t care what olfaction means to someone trying to enjoy a meal, which says heaps about what they think food service actually is. Everything else just speaks to the “I don’t care what you smell” part, or there’s something very wrong with how the kitchen is run. /rant
John_McMurray@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah no dude, I keep a ten percent mixture of bleach n water around to sanitize surfaces I use for food prep. This is standard practice. The dishes get soaked in a weak bleach mixture after washing. 3 sinks, wash, bleach, rinse.
tate@lemmy.sdf.org 4 weeks ago
In some areas (depends on local health dept.) restaurant kitchens are required to have weak bleach solutions around for sanitizing food prep surfaces.
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Bro, bleach is literally how you are supposed to sanitize restaurant surfaces. This thread is wild.
awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
The first two are obvious attempts at covering up something worse with “clean” smells, and/or the staff has no idea what “clean” actually means.
Or they’re the cleanest places you’ve never eaten in.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Well put.
Just wanted to point out when an odor is pleasant it’s an aroma.
ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 4 weeks ago
heavy perfume …
“I don’t care what you smell”
This is one reason I stopped eating lunch with other people. Some people use so much of Deodorant (oh the irony in the name) that the volatile compounds get adsorbed onto the surface of fluids in the mouth and then get tasted and also go into the stomach. All I’d say is - They taste bad.
I don’t think those chemicals are supposed to be edible.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can smell roaches and bedbugs. One is annoying. The second will cause me to flee a building in horror
hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
I assume people just can’t identify the smell of cockroaches until they learned it? Similar to people being oblivious to the smell of marijuana when not Familie’s with it.
I’m not sure I would recognize the smell of roaches if I didn’t keep them as food for other animals. Stinky little buggers.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
This is basically what the “attachment” thing is they’re referring to in buddhism. It’s not a deep concept. It’s just that it’s mixed into every mental action.
All the meditation practice is just a matter of familiarizing oneself with the different smells in the kitchen of the mind.
If normal thinking is like cooking, meditation is like standing in the kitchen and stopping yourself every time your body goes on autopilot and starts preparing food.
Instead you just stand there, and stand there. If you’re doing vipassana then you’re taking each ingredient off the shelf and giving it a big whiff. One after another. For hours and hours, days, years. You’re getting more and more familiar with that kitchen.
Then, one day while you’re doing your kitchen standing, your nose detects another specific note. A note that’s been there all along, but you never would have noticed if you hadn’t spent so much time cataloguing all the smells of all the ingredients and cleaners. But now you spent thousands of hours getting to know all those scents, and there’s this other scent.
That’s the cockroaches. Now in this analogy, all the time you’ve spent meditating, doing shamatha meditation, you’ve been learning to magically delete parts of the kitchen. The kitchen is your mind so you kind of have magic powers there. You’re meditating. You see the pot go to the stove and start boiling spaghetti. “Nope, no cooking” and the pot goes back and the spaghetti goes back.
All the shamatha meditation has been giving you the telekinesis needed to push things around in the kitchen. The vipassana meditation has been giving you a thorough understanding of what’s in the kitchen, where it goes, how it works.
So you take your knowledge of the kitchen’s contents, and that lets you differentiate and notice the cockroach smell. That’s the result of your vipassana meditation. Identifying the cockroaches as separate from the food is your insight.
Then you use the magic editing powers you’ve developed through shamatha meditation, ie now that you have the insight about the cockroaches, because you’ve done your shamatha you have the strength and control to just say “nah” and make the roaches disappear.
At first you’re worried. What if the kitchen doesn’t work? But you cook some stuff. It works fine. Things smell better, it’s more pleasant to cook now, in a way you never knew it could be more pleasant.
Anyway. I’ve done a lot of zen training, and I’ve always said that the word “attachment” is often poorly interpreted. It’s not the exact same thing that english word refers to. It’s just the closest word we have for this very specific thing happening in consciousness.
The fact that buddhist insight can’t be conveyed in words does NOT mean it’s out of this world or esoteric. The smell of garlic cannot be conveyed in words either
We can kinda shapes and sounds using words. We almost can’t describe tastes and smells at all, except by comparing them to similar tastes and smells. That doesn’t mean shapes and sounds are more real than tastes and smells. It just means our language doesn’t go there.
So all the mystery of zen buddhism isn’t because of some deep well of thing that can’t be seen, hidden behind nonsense words. It’s just a mystery in words because it’s like the smell of cockroaches: no way to teach it to someone other than handing them a container full of cockroaches and saying “take a whiff of this”.
There’s no way to hand someone a container full of dukkha (“attachment” in english) and say “get a whiff of this; this is the thing that causes your suffering”. Handing someone containers of samples to smell, in the mind, is hard. All you can do is give people instructions for being in the right spot to figure it out for themselves: “Sit down. Empty your mind. Pay attention to each thought that comes up, notice it, let it go”.
In the analogy this becomes
“Go to your kitchen. Don’t cook anything. If you find that you’re cooking something, take a moment to notice how what you were cooking smells, then put it away.”
Sorry for the wall of text. I always say I’m gonna keep it short and then the minimum words to get the idea across ends up being huge. I’ll get better at articulating this.
Anyway, this just reminded me of the buddhist thing, and I realized this “cockroaches in the kitchen walls” analogy works nicely with why meditation is done and how it leads to enlightenment.
Naz@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Weird. Marijuana has an iconic, skunk-like / rotten bologna smell to me. I can smell someone smoking up to maybe 500 feet away, sometimes from the inside of my car. It’s a deeply repugnant smell.
The strange thing being, I’ve smelled the actual flowers and the plant up close, and it just smells like grass. It only smells like shit when it’s burning, oddly enough.
No idea why. Everything about the “natural smell” up close screams “this is a plant and can’t harm you in any way shape or form”. That specific experience made me in favor of decriminalization.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Similar to people being oblivious to the smell of marijuana when not familiar with it.
I can’t smell certain types of marijuana. I could smell the more home grown type, but now I have to be next to 6 people smoking to smell it. I don’t smoke it either, so it’s not that. I think they’ve crop engineered it to take the smell out maybe? It could be just me.
marcos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
TBF, there are lots of things with a smell similar to cockroaches. Some of them wouldn’t be a red flag to be found at a restaurant. Also, smells are very localized, and I doubt your friend walks through the kitchen.
But yeah, I’ve gone away from restaurants because they smelled like cockroaches.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Smells are very localized
Smells are airborne. They move with the air.
You can walk into a house and tell they’re cooking dinner, just by smells that have traveled 50 feet from the kitchen to the front door.
samus12345@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I thought everyone could. Is that something only some people can smell as well?
RBWells@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Roaches do have a smell. Yuck. Ants though? There are so many different kinds of them, I can’t smell them, or I haven’t noticed if so.
My lunatic ex had a nose like a bloodhound. He could smell anything.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I don’t question your friend’s ability to smell cockroaches, but I gotta tell you, there is no restaurant without them. The best you can do is minimize.
Roaches go where there’s food. That’s just a fact of life.
tja@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Wait, is that true? Is someone able to smell ants?
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
There are lots of weird genetic traits. Sneezing triggered by sunlight is another funny one.
Stern@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
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.
MacStache@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
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.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Still can’t believe that some people are unable to smell rain coming in the summer!
Webster@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
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.
insufferableninja@lemdro.id 4 weeks ago
wait, not everyone gets that?
Ibaudia@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I have the sunlight sneeze. I would much rather be able to smell ants.
This feels like a shitty superpower what-if.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
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?
Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
I sneeze from sunlight, luckily it’s only the first time for the day or very bright light.
MisshapenDeviate@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
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.
jupyter_rain@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Maybe not genetically, but fun fact about sneezing-quirks: There exists "Sneezing induced by sexual ideation or orgasm. Source: scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=20844552323960…
Winter8593@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Wait I have that one! My dad has it too, but my brother doesn’t. All three of us are colorblind too lol.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The sneezing one must be an extreme case of our normal reactions, because I read years ago that if you’re on the verge of a sneeze, and it’s not happening, you should look at a bright light. 50% of the time, it works every time.
FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I have the sun sneezes
Actually it also triggers if go from really dark to really bright like turning on the bathroom light at night
thegr8goldfish@startrek.website 4 weeks ago
Smell is how ants communicate with one another so maybe these ant sniffers will be the first humans who can speak ant.
Cikos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
cant say for ant. but i can smell cockroaches
snapoff@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
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.
scottywh@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
100%
I can smell them to the point I know when an area has an abundance of ant hills.
Almrond@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can, they also taste absolutely abhorrent and ruin food they are in for me. It’s a very bitter chemical taste and smell.
cadekat@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
Who the fuck is out here censoring fuck?
alekwithak@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You can’t say shit or dead or suicide or fuck anymore because the internet has become C O R P O R A T E
awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Please spoiler your comment
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Stop fucking cussing you goddamn asshole.
lseif@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
because its a fucking swear word
TheControlled@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Holy shit I thought I was either full of shit or a mutant freak. I’m happy to be a mutant freak.
I feel so validated right now you guys have no idea.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Congratulations on your mutation. This one sucks less than the cilantro one.
NatakuNox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This! I used to tell people all the time I could smell some ant hills from several yards away. Fire ants smell like death. The larger and more aggressive species in my area smell more than the more benign ants. I’m sure it’s a warning to other animals to stay away.
alekwithak@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This just tells me ant particles are constantly flying into my nose and mouth and I don’t have receptors for them. Gross
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Don’t think about the non-ant particles, it won’t help.
Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
If you smelled poop even if it’s fast away, then poop particles have gone inside your nose, and yes. Tha nose cavity is connected to your mouth cavity.
Good luck sleeping, knowing that whenever you smell disgusting things, they are now also inside your mouth.
efstajas@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Honestly, kind of a blessing. It’s not like you could do much about it if you knew.
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
When you smell a fart, molecules from someone else’s asshole are inside your nose
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I mean, your bed is home to tens of thousands of microscopic bugs as well. I’d rather not smell them.
Allero@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
It’s like me figuring out after 23 years that most people don’t sneeze looking at the sun
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
Same for me. If I feel a sneeze coming on I look at a bright light to hurry it up. I thought this was normal but appetite isn’t.
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Wait are you telling me y’all actually don’t smell ants? They’re a weird and kinda smell like blue cheese. Definitely the smellier of insects.
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Ant smell is for communicating with other ants. These are ant smellers not human. The ant-people have been controlling our governments. It’s true! Look it up!
Maggoty@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Mine has always been vision and hearing hard sounds, like doors closing. I can hear all the stupid little sounds like that. And I’m just weirdly good at deciphering shadows at night as long as there’s some light.
I’m sure in ancient times this variation of who has good senses for what served a purpose.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Probably similar to that “bitterness” test that a lot of kids got to do in science class where you taste that little strip of paper. To some it’s nothing, to others it’s very bitter. Genetics has given some the extra “taste”, supposedly that might allow people to avoid eating poisonous things containing oxalates or glucosinates. Unfortunately it also means you probably dislike things lie IPA beers or other foods that have bitter compounds that don’t bother others.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Gotta love how they see a video talking about it, with comments talking about it, and their first step is to post on Facebook asking about it before doing a simple search on their own.
bamfic@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can smell wasps nests. The queen odor is very strong to me. But other smells people notice are lost on me.
And I hear everything. Autism I guess.
essteeyou@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Some people wipe standing up…
HeadfullofSoup@kbin.earth 4 weeks ago
It's seem to be the same as with cilantro a genetic trait that some people have and other don't
https://academic.oup.com/ae/article/61/2/85/1756864?login=false
Dunno if that a good source as everything i found about that exept for thos page talked about the tiktok post and not science
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 4 weeks ago
Same as asparagus wee. Man, when anyone has eaten asparagus I can smell it before I enter the door to the bathroom. When I have eaten it myself, I’m partly horrified and partly morbidly fascinated. What the fuck is up with only some people being able to smell it.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can only smell them when I kill them 🤷♂️
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can’t smell living ants, but there’s a common species of ant in the US that smells like rotten coconut when squished.
stanleytweedle@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Formic acid
Raiderkev@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
By smell, do u mean like ants are walking by n u can smell them, or like you’re jamming your face into ant hills n giving it a whiff?
dumbass@leminal.space 4 weeks ago
So, what do ants smell like?
thejoker954@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Great, now im gonna accidently inhale some ants as I try to smell them.
1984@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
I never noticed this, but I’m not around ants that much as a software engineer. :)
baduhai@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
I can smell ants, but I dont think they smell that bad. The smell is hardly ever strong enough to be unpleasant. Also, in the region of the world I live in, if you start smelling ants but don’t see them anywhere, it means it’s gonna rain.
Big_Bob@hexbear.net 4 weeks ago
Huh, TIL I can smell ants too.
I used to live in a basement that had regular cycles of ant infestations. I would know they had returned, because the room had started to smell a certain way. Kind of like, damp slightly sweaty skin, but also kind of woody?
Every time I smelt it, I’d always find fresh ant eggs along the wall in the room.
niktemadur@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
My mother in law can do it, she’ll walk into a room, sniff disagreeably and say - “Huele a hormiga.”
Xanthobilly@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Is it the formic acid? I bet it is.
Bezzelbob@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This makes me wonder all the weird shit we can’t detect just because of our genes. Like I read about this one women who could smell dementia. And to think birds can see UV light and its theorized they can see the fucking earth’s magnetic field which is how they can tell which why is north and south.
MadBob@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
I agree it’s surprising that people can smell ants, but it’s not typing-what-the-fuck-in-all-caps surprising.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
See, My Hero Academia is real. It’s just that our quirks suck. Is not having allergies a quirk. Cause that’s the best I’ve got. That or my weak sense of smell. Comes in handy when cleaning disgusting stuff.
TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
“Genetic quirk”, you say?
Image
HonkTonkWoman@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
“What’s your mutation? Teleportation? Laser Eyes? Weaponized Tornadoes?”
“…I can smell bees…. how about yours?”
“Oh… well… my mutation is that cilantro tastes chalk to me.”
Dasus@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I was born with 2.5 kidneys, an extra ureter and 4 of my permanent teeth never showed up. Also mild colour vision deficiency.
I was talking about it with our first lieutenant in the army and he went “Corporal, you’re a mutant!”. “Yes, sir, I am sir.”
blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
God soap cilantro just sucks. I really wish people knew it tastes like gross to like 3-21% of the world population.
I just wish it wasn’t automatically in anything Mexican. I just want to taste what other people taste. :(
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The mortality ratio of that school gives me pause.
Also, so many old white guys hanging on the wall.
Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
What the hey? Let them down!
Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
What is this… Xavier’s school for ANTS?!
jaykay@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
My anime head sees „quirk” think MHA lmao