I have a very powerful sense of smell.

  • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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    7 months ago

    I was telling an ex about smelling my coworker’s fear all day. He had a crush on me (it was a call center, so not an especially professional environment), and we had to share my cubicle for training, and he was just pouring out anxiety sweat. My ex had no idea what the fuck I was talking about and I’ve never met someone else who can identify the emotions that a person has by their sweat.

    Saying someone “can smell fear” is a normal thing that comes up a lot in media, so I assumed it was also normal to notice. Apparently not. I’ll take all of the help my autistic ass can get in iding others’ emotions though

    • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Oh hey, I remember Mythbusters did a thing on that years ago, got a professional sniffer in who was almost consistently able to detect samples of fear sweat out of a lineup of sweat samples. So yeah, fear smell is absolutely a thing if you know what to sniff for.

      • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        You got me down a rabbit hole, but it’s now been officially supported that people subconsciously react to smells, so I’m really curious if more people can train themselves to smell it.

    • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      I always thought when people talked about “smelling fear” it was just a poetic way of saying it was obvious that someone was afraid. I’ve certainly never been aware of picking up on a person’s emotions via scent or heard someone say that they’ve done that.

      • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        Can you smell it on yourself? Like, do you find that your sweaty clothes smell the same after a run and, say, a presentation (or something else that gives you anxiety/scares you)? I think it’s most noticeable with my own sweat, but fear/anxiety sweat smells bad to me in a way that normal body odor or exercise sweat don’t.

        Sex sweat also smells very different, but that’s normally more pleasant to me than the others. I haven’t noticed a specific smell of aggression or any other kind of sweat though.

        Edit: I think you’re right that “smelling fear” is metaphoric, but I did not realize that until I started talking about it.

            • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              That’s crazy to me. I’m just learning all this. I barely have a sense of smell so distinguishing between different kinds of sweats is probably entirely out of my reach. I’ll try and train it still

              • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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                7 months ago

                It’s the only sense of mine that’s at all good, so that probably has something to do with it

    • Sunrosa@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It smells kind of sour in my experience and i believe I’ve been able to smell it in my childhood pet bird as well as my wife

      • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        Yeah, it smells like battery acid to me. It’s fucking wild if birds use the same chemical signals as we do

        • Sunrosa@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Wow I can’t believe other people smell the battery acid too. Maybe im not hallucinating

    • NationProtons@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      This is kinda interesting to me. I can pretty easily notice it with myself (If I’m scared for a presentation or calling with somebody). But I don’t think I’ve every been able to identify it in somebody else

      • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        Yeah, I probably only noticed it in others because my sister and I shared clothing growing up and she is also an anxiety-ridden mess

    • credit crazy@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Now I had the opposite thought because I thought it was normal for people and I was the only one who couldn’t lol

  • Hux
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    7 months ago

    Worst.

    X-Men mutation.

    Ever.

      • Hux
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        7 months ago
        • Suddenly makes a game of “tag” way more high-stakes—and FUN!

        • Don’t have to feel guilty about boiling your lobsters alive.

        • Ticks and mosquitoes? Never an issue.

        I’ll admit it makes petting zoos a tragic affair, but what the hell good is “smelling” ants?

  • juliebean@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    i only found out they had a smell a couple years ago, and i’m in my 30s. not because i can’t smell them though, but just because i hadn’t noticed it before.

  • Halasham@dormi.zone
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    7 months ago

    Yeah… I can barely smell at all. Even normally strong smells like that of the urine of an unfixed male cat aren’t particularly impactful to me. I wouldn’t have even considered the potentiality that ants have a distinctive smell in spite of being aware that they use pheromone trails for navigation.

  • Onii-Chan@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    I’ve always been able to smell them. I can’t believe there are people out there who can’t. My world has been rocked.

    • lars@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 months ago

      Non-ant-smeller here. Can you smell them before you see them? Or is the smell usually after you see them?

      • Onii-Chan@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        For me it’s usually only after they’ve died. They have this bitter, extremely unpleasant acidic smell to them.

  • sajran
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    7 months ago

    But… How do you even know you can smell ants? Why did you try it? Or can you smell them from meters away?