## Metadata - Author: [[Diane Ackerman ]] - Full Title: A Natural History of the Senses - Category: #books ## Highlights - Though most people will swear they couldn’t possibly do such a thing, studies show that both children and adults, just by smelling, are able to determine whether a piece of clothing was worn by a male or a female. ([Location 306](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=306)) - Etymologically speaking, a breath is not neutral or bland—it’s cooked air; we live in a constant simmering. There is a furnace in our cells, and when we breathe we pass the world through our bodies, brew it lightly, and turn it loose again, gently altered for having known us. ([Location 314](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=314)) - Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. But they are shapes, they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception. ([Location 322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=322)) - The charm of language is that, though it’s human-made, it can on rare occasions capture emotions and sensations which aren’t. But the physiological links between the smell and language centers of the brain are pitifully weak. Not so the links between the smell and the memory centers, a route that carries us nimbly across time and distance. ([Location 327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=327)) - When we see something, we can describe it in gushing detail, in a cascade of images. We can crawl along its surface like an ant, mapping each feature, feeling each texture, and describing it with visual adjectives like red, blue, bright, big, and so on. But who can map the features of a smell? ([Location 329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=329)) - Smells are our dearest kin, but we cannot remember their names. Instead we tend to describe how they make us feel. Something smells “disgusting,” “intoxicating,” “sickening,” “pleasurable,” “delightful,” “pulse-revving,” “hypnotic,” or “revolting.” ([Location 332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=332)) - Smells are our dearest kin, but we cannot remember their names. Instead we tend to describe how they make us feel. Something smells “disgusting,” “intoxicating,” “sickening,” “pleasurable,” “delightful,” “pulse-revving,” “hypnotic,” or “revolting. ([Location 338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=338)) - There should be a word for the way the top of an infant’s head smells, both talcumy and fresh, unpolluted by life and diet. ([Location 348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=348)) - In a famous letter, Napoleon told Josephine “not to bathe” during the two weeks that would pass before they met, so that he could enjoy all her natural aromas. ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=357)) - Violets contain ionone, which short-circuits our sense of smell. The flower continues to exude its fragrance, but we lose the ability to smell it. Wait a minute or two, and its smell will blare again. ([Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=367)) - When I hold a violet to my nose and inhale, odor molecules float back into the nasal cavity behind the bridge of the nose, where they are absorbed by the mucosa containing receptor cells bearing microscopic hairs called cilia. Five million of these cells fire impulses to the brain’s olfactory bulb or smell center. Such cells are unique to the nose. If you destroy a neuron in the brain, it’s finished forever; it won’t regrow. If you damage neurons in your eyes or ears, both organs will be irreparably damaged. But the neurons in the nose are replaced about every thirty days and, unlike any other neurons in the body, they stick right out and wave in the air current like anemones on a coral reef. ([Location 378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=378)) - Heredity also determines the shade of yellow of the olfactory area. The deeper the shade, the keener and more acute the sense of smell. Albinos have a poor sense of smell. Animals, which can smell with beatific grandeur, have dark-yellow olfactory regions; ours are light yellow. The fox’s is reddish brown, the cat’s an intense mustard brown. ([Location 384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=384)) - All smells fall into a few basic categories, almost like primary colors: minty (peppermint), floral (roses), ethereal (pears), musky (musk), resinous (camphor), foul (rotten eggs), and acrid (vinegar). ([Location 396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=396)) - For centuries, people tormented and sometimes slaughtered animals to obtain four glandular secretions: ambergris (the oily fluid a sperm whale uses to protect its stomach from the sharp backbone of the cuttlefish and the sharp beak of the squid on which it feeds), castoreum (found in the abdominal sacs of Canadian and Russian beavers, and used by them to mark territories), civet (a honeylike secretion from the genital area of the nocturnal, carnivorous Ethiopian cat), and musk (a red, jellylike secretion from the gut of an East Asian deer). ([Location 404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=404)) - We need only eight molecules of a substance to trigger an impulse in a nerve ending, but forty nerve endings must be aroused before we smell something. ([Location 421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=421)) - Smell was the first of our senses, and it was so successful that in time the small lump of olfactory tissue atop the nerve cord grew into a brain. Our cerebral hemispheres were originally buds from the olfactory stalks. We think because we smelled. ([Location 537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=537)) - Pungent odors are absorbed by fats: If you put an onion or cantaloupe in the refrigerator with an open tub of butter, the butter will absorb the odor. Hair also contains fat, which is why it leaves grease stains on pillows and antimacassars. It absorbs smells, too, like smoke or cologne. ([Location 570](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=570)) - Body odor comes from the apocrine glands, which are small when we’re born and develop substantially during puberty; there are many of them scattered around our armpits, face, chest, genitals, and anus. Some researchers conclude that a large part of our joy in kissing is really a joy in smelling and caressing each other’s face, where one’s personal scent glows. Among far-flung tribes in a number of countries—Borneo, on the Gambia River in West Africa, in Burma, in Siberia, in India—the word for “kiss” means “smell”; a kiss is really a prolonged smelling of one’s beloved, relative, or friend. ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=573)) - Some people, like me, inherit a genetic oddity that causes them to sneeze when confronted by bright light. I’m afraid this syndrome has been given the overly cute acronym of ACHOO (autosomol dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst). If I feel a sneeze hovering, all I have to do is look at the sun to bring on the explosion, a light apocalypse. ([Location 724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=724)) - Fragrance seems to be a recessive trait in roses, and two deeply fragrant parents may produce a petal-perfect but smell-less offspring. ([Location 764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=764)) - Roses mix unusually well with water, making fine sherbets and pastries, so the flower has become a delicate staple in Islamic cooking as well as being much used to scent apparel. ([Location 790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=790)) - Moistening, misting, and heaving, the earth breathes like a great dark beast. When barometric pressure is high, the earth holds its breath and vapors lodge in the loose packing and random crannies of the soil, only to float out again when the pressure is low and the earth exhales. The keen-nosed, like Helen Keller, smell the vapors rising from the soil, and know by that signal that there will be rain or snow. This may also be, in part, how farm animals anticipate earthquakes—by smelling ions escaping from the earth. ([Location 914](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=914)) - Our lives are quiet. We like to be disturbed by delight. ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=1033)) - Perfume began in Mesopotamia as incense offered to the gods to sweeten the smell of animal flesh burned as offerings, and it was used in exorcisms, to heal the sick, and after sexual intercourse. The word’s Latin etymology tells us how it worked: per = through + fumar to smoke. ([Location 1104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0067AHQXQ&location=1104))