The Senses: Something Smells Fishy

Andreas Keller is a PhD student who studies and researches odour and runs a website that covers odour and smell. His Olfaction page is a jumping off point to short articles on various aspects of smell. Each is meticulously researched and links to relevant research and other sites. If you want a glimpse into research about smell this is a great place to start. You'll come across tidbits such as:

• Some bees blend smells to create perfume
• People who smell odours that aren't there have phantosmia
• Why there hasn't been more research into how an why asparagus changes the smell of urine and how people notice the odour (hint - researchers haven't recently "had the courage" to ask people to smell other people's urine)

Andreas' site is one of the carefully put together pieces of the web that are embarkation points to much more. Start here and you'll end up jumping off to visit other sites. For example Andreas' site pointed me to the resources at The Sense of Smell Institute (www.senseofsmell.org). The Institute is a perfect example of what I call Wayne's Law. Years ago my friend Wayne pointed out that:

For any topic think of the first word or phrase that comes to mind and add "www." to the beginning and ".com" or ".net" or ".org" to the end and you'll find what you're looking for.

When I started looking into The Senses I should have just typed www.senseofsmell.org into my browser. I could have saved a lot of time.