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.
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.
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.
I'm one of these people. I can smell an apartment roach 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)
dingy carpet (think: "old movie theater")
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. 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
An example of a top-shelf dining odor experience? I once went to a Japanese restaurant at opening time. The only smell in the dining room was that of the specific kind of imported cedar in the cutting boards. This is traditionally cleaned with boiling hot water, and nothing else. This released a gentle woody and pine-y scent that just filled the space and invited the senses. I came hungry, but I sat down ravenous. The meal to follow was something I will never forget.
Edit: some clarification since this got some traction. I know that bleach and ammonia are s-tier disinfectants and absolutely necessary for food prep, health standards, and the rest. I use this stuff at home. My issue is with establishments that utterly fail at ventilating these odor and spoil the dining experience with strong chemical odors. Looking deeper I find very strong cleaning odors (long after opening hours) suspicious since it's very easy to splash stuff around, giving the impression of cleanliness, but not actually clean anything. Strong chemical smells also make it impossible to detect sewage, rot, mold, soil, and other things that would easily flag a restaurant. I'd rather not take the chance.
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. And there's pinesol in the mop bucket.
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.
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 familiar 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
However, the sense of smell in humans is far less developed, and there has been recent controversy over what, exactly, the odorous house ant smells like. This species belongs to a large group of ants whose members are thought to smell like blue cheese (Forney and Markovetz 1971) [link is direct 3.0 mb .pdf download from elsevier], yet numerous online sources report their odor as “rancid butter,” “cleaning solution,” or, most commonly, “rotten coconuts.”
Specifically, the house hippo ant.
*The actual factual paper was actually literally published in 2015, no cap.
At the same time, Penick had people rate what they thought the ant smelled like. Most people said blue cheese, but some thought it smelled like rotted coconut. So Penick rotted a coconut in his backyard and found a mold growing on it that, sure enough, is the same mold (Penicillium roqueforti) that's used to produce blue cheese. Another mystery, solved.
So American house ants, rotten coconuts and blue cheese all smell the same. Life is weird.
Me 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.
yikes. how do you react when you get a whiff? is it already too late and you don't smell them until they are next to you, or is it a general "oh wow you have a roach prob in this house"
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.
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!
Never in my life has an ant had any smell whatsoever. I was today years old when I realized people could smell ants.
In fact, I’ll go one step further. I grew up on a farm, tons of bugs. The only bug that I can ever remember smelling are those stupid Asian stink bugs invasive thingies that seem to have proliferated in the northeast US recently. When you squish them, they smell like green apples.
I can’t think of any other bug that smells at all - even when they are squished.
Bright lights, especially flashing ones, stimulate the same nerve cluster that the urge to sneeze comes from and can help trigger a sneeze that is loading. Some people are more susceptible to that stimulus than others.
I wiggle my fingers in front of my nose in a sort of “multilegged gallop” motion, as if ky hand were trying to scramble up the bridge of my nose and slipping. But with no touch.
There are a couple other ones, like cilantro tastes like soap (took me some time to figure that one out) and apparently one that makes pee stink when you eat asparagus, and you need another to actually smell the pee stink (I don't know if it's true, I just got em all and collected info in the internet).
Biting into a piece of dark chocolate for the first time will cause me to quickly sneeze similar to how people do when the step out into the sun or inhale black pepper.
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.
I am oddly good at hearing engine noises. If a motor or piece of machinery starts doing something different I usually hear it. I worked in manufacturing and I could usually call out a machine that was about to breakdown. Also when a part has been replaced I usually hear the difference in noise.
Now you've got me wondering if your super hearing stops at machinery or if you could hear the human body doing it's thing, provided a stethoscope and test subject- I mean willing participant.
I have really annoying hearing. I'm not sure how to fully describe it but my ears are super tuned into sounds. Very often I will be sitting with my wife or somebody else and I am like "do you hear that?" and they are like "wtf are you talking about?" and I have to be like "Shhh... That! Did you hear it?" and they are like "no wtf" and then I'm like "Wait no no... Wait... That! Did you hear it?" and they are like "Wait yeah... How tf did you hear that while we were talking? Were you paying attention?" and I'm like "No, I wasn't because I kept hearing this noise"...
Like... Sometimes people's voices just sound like noises and I can't hear them unless I focus because my ears are listening to the noises around me. It can be really frustrating.
Likely red/green colour blind, less cones but more rods (better resolution, also night vision). Your ancestors may have done night watch in the village or been hunters.
I don't think the shadows at night thing is genetics. Think that's more of a paying attention lol. People say they can't see and that's because they're looking for details and colour. In the dark you're looking for outlines and shadows. I learned this from my flight instructor. But it's a skill more people need to learn. This isn't to say night blindness doesn't exist.
Nah, I figured this out in the military. I was always the last guy to start using my night vision device. Now, to be fair this was 20+ years ago and night vision devices have come a long way since then. Even in my years we got an upgrade that was much better and I used it a lot more. But I was also the one guy hitting all the night fire targets. So there was definitely something there before I went and got old.
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.
I have an (untested) hypothesis that people who get the “soapy” taste of cilantro also smell stinkbugs. When I squish a stinkbug it reeks of cilantro’s “soapy” taste. I remember reading somewhere that they’re the same type of chemicals.
It really fucked me up when I realized that "picture this" wasn't an entirely figurative saying, and everyone else does actually see stuff in their "mind's eye."
Same, thinking about it the idea of putting my hand in the bowl to do that is grossing me out too. Do you go in from the front or the back or do you kind of lean over?
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.
TikTok isn't a great place for conversation. But then again, neither is Facebook any more. Public posts on Facebook have commentary that makes the old YouTube comments look downright intelligent and engaging.
Within physical bounds of course. Neurotypical people don't notice a lot around them, because their brain filters grey noise out. And yes, it's sometimes overwhelming.
Ok so about the hearing thing... I've always assumed I'm somewhere on the spectrum, focus issues etc all the tell tale signs but like at a 2 or 3 tops. However, last like year I've been finding myself awake at night once or twice a week and i swear i can hear the cosmos. Literally every noise everywhere. Is it imagination? Combination?
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.
A nasty, sickly sweet, acidic smell that absolutely ruined all forms of mushroom and fungus for me because they seem interconnected, like an organic, alien smell of decay and fermenting biology.
I don't have a great sense of smell, but I seem particularly sensitive to smells like ants and truffles, it makes me gag.
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.
Human brain waves are affected ever so slightly by magnetic fields, some people's more than others. It might very well be that there's some kind of subtle subconscious effect of the Earth's magnetic field on our sense of orientation.
Some do but it most likely doesn't! There are experiments where the bird's beaks had a local anesthesia applied and it had no effect on the bird's sense of orientation. Instead it seems like it's most likely something called cryptochrome in the eyes, where a quantum mechanism (radical pair reaction) might be taking place that could generate sense-able electrical signals. There is further evidence for this, like birds being unable to tell when a magnetic field is reversed 180° (which an iron-based compass should be able to), and their sense of direction being effectively turned off by very mild RF interference at the right frequency, which also wouldn't affect an iron compass.
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.
I wake up during surgeries as my body processes chemical compounds like anesthetics faster than the average person. I can pretty much always feel dental work since novacaine barely works on me.
I'm also allergic to Benadryl.
I don't think either of those are particularly magical but it sure seems that way to doctors I guess.
I can for sure smell them but only close up, not from feet away so I’m not sure what that means for me in terms of this gene. They have a very odd musty smell which is also detectable on anything they’ve walked on recently. It’s not a very pleasant odor.
As far as I know it’s all ants, not just a particular type.
I do hear them if they are large enough, in high enough numbers and if I have my ear close enough, but it isn't a hum that I hear. I hear what I imagine are them walking or the stuff they carry.
There are a lot of creatures that have very distinct smells but you never get close enough to them to notice. Reptiles make for some stanky pets even though I doubt many of you could identify a lizard terrarium smell. Many insects produce smells as defense mechanisms but you can barely smell it as a human. Grasshoppers and many beatles in particular tend to secrete nasty smelling slime when handled, a smell that follows them around, and that's a smell I can recall clearly and sharply.
I have a theory though that human smell has lost sensitivity because of social reasons. We used to be fantastic at chemical analysis until civilization happened and we all started using soap and telling each other that normal, every day smells are now "bad" and we need to mask them with perfumes and soaps. This made us afraid to smell things for fear that we were taking something "bad" inside us, the idea of evil or bad air goes back very, very far.
My weird "paranormal" quirk is knowing when someone is sick by smell. My nose is usually blocked up and I can barely smell flowers but for some reason I can just tell when someone is incubating some sickness that will make them bedridden the next day.
No idea how it works. I just smell "sick" - it's kind of this warm earthy ground smell. I can even smell it on myself sometimes and I'll know I need to take a day off tomorrow. My theory is I can smell something off in the skin temperature.
I believe cats and/or dogs can also smell "sick" as you've described. I remember reading about a hospital that had either a dog or a cat who would cuddle up with people the night before they passed away of their sickness or something.
This thread makes me glad Im bad with regular smells, let alone ant pheromones and shit like that. Downside is I cant tune out sounds, I always hear everything full blast
I can only smell them if there's a number of them, but 'cleaning solution' like one said works for the scent. I also have the 'cilantro tastes like soap' gene, so maybe they're connected.
i want to know how many things people had to snarf before realizing it was a tiny bug that they are smelling. how many ants were lost in noses over the years from people testing the theory?
I can smell them like at a 1m distance. They smell bad. The first time I realized what they smell like, I took a bite of a muffin that I left on the counter. I tasted the muffin and another bad flavor so I looked and it had ants. From that moment I could smell them, not because I couldn't smell them before but because now I knew what they smelled like.
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.