“Genetic quirk”, you say?
“What’s your mutation? Teleportation? Laser Eyes? Weaponized Tornadoes?”
“…I… I can smell ants… how about yours?”
“Oh… well… my mutation is that cilantro tastes like chalk to me.”
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.”
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. :(
The weirdest thing happened when I was recovering from covid. I couldn’t really taste much, but cilantro suddenly had a perfume-like scent. It eventually went back to normal after I recovered, but I definitely have a healthy level of sympathy for people who taste soapy cilantro now
Exposure therapy works for this. You can still detect the chemical that made it taste that way, but the brain can rewire to perceive it as pleasant. If you’re serious about fixing the problem, start by adding small amounts to dishes and work your way up as your tolerance changes.
That just sounds like brainwashing yourself to make something taste ‘good’ when it’s not. See Alcohol, black coffee, etc.
Right, but I legitimately love the taste of coffee now. Am I wrong? I know I didn’t like it as a kid, but does that mean I was correct to not like it then or correct to like it now?
I don’t know, but my instinct is that being able to enjoy the flavor of coffee is a real benefit. For instance, I can taste the nuance of coffee flavor in tiramisu. Without gaining an appreciation for coffee flavor, many foods that use that flavor would just taste bad.
There are no inherently good or bad flavours, it’s all just how our brains are wired to perceive them. Sometimes the wiring gets it wrong and warns us about a food that is harmless. I see no reason not to try fixing that.
There are no inherently good or bad flavours
X is in the eye of the beholders are the worst.
You can fool yourself into thinking shit tastes like sugar all you want but subjective reality and the reality your brain perceives should not be conflated lol.
Shit should taste bad though, given that it is bad for you to eat. This is not the case for cilantro, so why not retrain your brain to like it?
All I was offering is a strategy that has worked for me, and many other people. I used to hate cilantro and despised its omnipresence in certain cuisines. I can now enjoy these things and you possibly can as well, if you choose to do the work. If you’d prefer to whine instead of attempting to solve the problem you said you have, that’s on you.
Those are more like your eyes adjusting to brightness/darkness. You’re not tricking yourself into thinking the alcohol taste or coffee bitterness are good, you’re desensitizing yourself to them, which lets you sense other flavors.
Sometimes there’s no other strong flavors so you get “Huh, this cold brew concentrate tastes like water, I didn’t even add ice, try it” “wtf that is so bitter!!”
How do you know that cilantro tastes like soap and not soap tastes like cilantro.
All I’m saying is that cilantro doesn’t taste that good and some soaps smell amazing.
The mortality ratio of that school gives me pause.
Also, so many old white guys hanging on the wall.
What the hey? Let them down!
What is this… Xavier’s school for ANTS?!
I have a friend who can smell cockroaches no joke. We always take her restaurant suggestions very seriously.
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.
No anime conventions for you unless you wear a gas mask!
In 95 I was staying at a hotel that had a D&D convention. I was with a group of union boilermakers and we got gripped at by the staff for refusing to allow some of those stinkers on the elevator with us.
I’ve never actually been to an anime convention and had no idea how common anime fans with poor hygiene actually existing was until I read some of the horror stories when this was posted before.
I can smell cockroaches and periods. It’s weird, but I can for some reason
I can smell when a woman has her period if I smell her skin, so not at any distance other than intimately. My best guess is all the hormonal changes alter pheromones from the normal and we can pick up on that.
Not like it is a bad smell, just her normal natural scent changes.
Oh yeah me as well. I can also smell when someone has a disease. I know cancer or at least the type my grandmother had but some of them I have no idea what is wrong with them. I can also differentiate different kinds of drugs.
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 have a good sense of smell but…that sounds more like cripplingly good
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.
There is a difference between standard bleach and pinesol usage and using it as a way to conceal other smells or problems. Or even worse, not knowing how to use those chemicals to clean. You know how to use a weak bleach solution for cooking surfaces, does your bartender? I’ve seen front of house employees over use cleaning chemicals because isn’t it better to use stronger chemicals to clean. My favorite was the hostess who didn’t want to clean the bathroom so she would just fill the soap and and paper products and fill a spray bottle with Lysol that she would spray around to give the smell of a clean bathroom.
It’s unlikely anyone will notice the smell of properly used cleaning products.
My favorite was the hostess who didn’t want to clean the bathroom so she would just fill the soap and and paper products and fill a spray bottle with Lysol that she would spray around to give the smell of a clean bathroom.
This is exactly the kind of BS I’m talking about. I once knew some pool lifeguards that had to rotate through bathroom cleaning duty. I overheard that their MO was to just get everything wet with a hose, splash pinesol on the floor, and call it a day.
Yeah, I can see a place smelling like a public swimming pool being off-putting. 10% bleach is really common across the food industry, though. Making bread, jerky, kombucha, and various grains, each facility had the same bleach concentration for cleaning (among other cleaning and sanitizing solutions).
I am my bartender. Also the janitor and cook. Yes, a ten percent bleach mixture does give an odor, it fades within minutes. I was just chopping raw chicken, sure, boiling water is an option, but awkward. Quick wipe down, spritz solution everywhere, wipe again 5 minutes later, better for all involved.
This is basically evey kitchen I’ve worked in. The pine sol can be substituted or more commonly mixed with other detergents.
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.
Yeah this entire thread is filled with people who think they have superpowers but failing basic logic.
That’s entirely possible. The problem is that with chlorine or ammonia vapors savaging your nasal cavity, you’ll never really know.
I’ve tried to push through in these situations and it’s never good.
Bro, bleach is literally how you are supposed to sanitize restaurant surfaces. This thread is wild.
Agreed! But “smells like cleanser” does not mean “is clean”. It jams up my radar (sense of smell) so it’s tough to figure out if anything else is up. I’d rather detect no off odors or cleansers at all to be sure.
Well put.
Just wanted to point out when an odor is pleasant it’s an aroma.
I can smell roaches and bedbugs. One is annoying. The second will cause me to flee a building in horror.
I’ve also informed several friends that they were pregnant. They never believe me the first time.
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.
Do you have a journal?
I do. Been keeping a journal since 2000 when I made my first entry on a plane to europe, because the guy who sold me the suitcase said he’d been keeping a journal since his first traveling.
Unfortunately, all the notebooks up to 2022 (which was roughly 50-75 notebooks, filled with my handwriting) have been lost. About half when I couldn’t pay for a storage unit, and about half a decade ago when they were stored in a friend’s barn and then we had a falling out and he pretended to not remember my storing them there.
But yeah. It helps me think to journal stuff out. So even though 90% of my journal entries are lost, it was still valuable to do.
I just really wish I could read my entries from early twenties and understand my own state of mind then.
One more example for your kitchen analogy, albeit coming from a different direction, is probably the smell of Durian.
When you first encounter the smell, you experiences pretty intensive stench - maybe like rotten meat. When you manage to get over it and eat it a bunch of times it does not stink for you anymore. You still recognize it’s a very intense smell, but it’s not stench anymore.
However, for everyone else unfamiliar with it it still stinks like hell.
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.
You should be able to smell a female plant in full (oily) bloom. I’ve read that smell is one of the problems that illegal farms/grow box owners have when tyring to stay undetected.
Similar to people being oblivious to the smell of marijuana when not familiar with it.
I can’t smell certain types of marijuana, I can smell the more home grown type. 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.
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.
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.
Dispersion varies widely due to the kind of smell, intensity, and air circulation.
Most smells do not travel 50 feet.
Most smells do not travel 50 feet.
I have to counter that in my experience most, if not all smells travel 15m. When the wind is right that increases massively.
I thought everyone could. Is that something only some people can smell as well?
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.
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.
Wait, is that true? Is someone able to smell ants?
There are lots of weird genetic traits. Sneezing triggered by sunlight is another funny one.
Veritasium video on that one:
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.
At least you don’t have my “sky-high cholesterol no matter what you eat” gene.
Also artificial sweeteners have an unpleasant chemical aftertaste that lingers for a long time. Apparently that’s generic too…
TIL about the artificial sweetener thing, this explains a lot. I have never been able to understand people enjoying diet soda.
Dude, same, and this is the first time I’ve heard of it. I thought the Diet Dr. Pepper commercials were just being cheeky when trying to compare it to dessert.
My grandfather had low cholesterol no matter what. It was always perfect. This man ate more bacon and had more buttermilk and cornbread than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.
I have to watch mine pretty closely. Well, I should, but I’ll just die horribly and early I guess. The alcohol will get me first anyway.
Hah, my grandfather had heart problems and very high cholesterol so we gave him such a hard time for eating unhealthy food. But now I have been a vegetarian for almost twenty years (I try to avoid eggs and dairy too) and my cholesterol is just as high as his was, unless I take medications. So we should have just let him eat whatever he wanted to…
I find that most sweeteners have the aftertaste, like Canderel and Sweetex, but Hermesetas taste fine. It might be worth trying a few brands and seeing if any work for you
I love cilantro, but I got the celery tastes bitter and spicy gene. So many people tell me it’s tasteless but it has a strong, terrible taste to me.
Just to signal boost the other guy that sounds a lot like a food allergy friend
Any time someone tells you something is “tasteless” you should feel free to discard all of their food opinions or give them a covid test
Cilantro tasted like soap to me until my wife described it as lemony, and it suddenly tasted different and now I like cilantro. Senses are weird
Cognitive Modulation of Olfactory Processing: Neuron
We showed how cognitive, semantic information modulates olfactory representations in the brain by providing a visual word descriptor, “cheddar cheese” or “body odor,” during the delivery of a test odor (isovaleric acid with cheddar cheese flavor) and also during the delivery of clean air. Clean air labeled “air” was used as a control. Subjects rated the affective value of the test odor as significantly more unpleasant when labeled “body odor” than when labeled “cheddar cheese.” In an event-related fMRI design, we showed that the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)/medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) was significantly more activated by the test stimulus and by clean air when labeled “cheddar cheese” than when labeled “body odor,” and the activations were correlated with the pleasantness ratings. This cognitive modulation was also found for the test odor (but not for the clean air) in the amygdala bilaterally.
If I eat cilantro by itself and focus on the idea of it tasting like soap, I can kinds taste it. It still tastes good to me, just with a hint of soapiness. It’s not enough to ruin it for me, and I have to be looking for it.
I love cilantro but one time I tasted the soap flavor. I had done a stir fry with cilantro and left the spoon in the still hot pot and there had been some cilantro stuck to the bottom of the spoon that sat there and cooked for as long as it took for the big pot to cool down. Then when I was doing dishes I picked up the spoon and I saw big bunch of cilantro so I ate it and it was horribly nasty and tasted like straight up hand soap. I thought for sure that some soap fell or splashed onto it but no it was just the cilantro. Never happened again either.
I believe that’s all on the same gene
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.
Yep same here! It’s nice when you feel a sneeze coming on and then it stops, you can kinda force it to happen!
Wait that’s a genetic quirk? I do that shit all the time with “the sneeze that won’t sneeze”
Sure is! It’s my favourite superpower.
Still can’t believe that some people are unable to smell rain coming in the summer!
I honestly love that smell. It’s relaxing.
Is that petrichor, or is that after rain?
Petrichor is after the rain, also an amazing smell! But sometimes there’s also a distinct note before summer rain starts. Similar to petrichor, but different.
I have the sunlight sneeze. I would much rather be able to smell ants.
This feels like a shitty superpower what-if.
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?
Wait, you can read in dreams? The letters don’t constantly change?
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.
Wait I have that one! My dad has it too, but my brother doesn’t. All three of us are colorblind too lol.
Maybe not genetically, but fun fact about sneezing-quirks: There exists "Sneezing induced by sexual ideation or orgasm. Source: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=2084455232396039941&hl=de&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&t=1716906331494&u=%23p%3D-Y8j_fJVLLsJ
Wait, I’m not the only one?? Amazing!
Me: – Seeing bright light – coughing – thinking certain sexy thoughts
Brain: “Make her sneeze!”
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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
Smell is how ants communicate with one another so maybe these ant sniffers will be the first humans who can speak ant.
cant say for ant. but i can smell cockroaches
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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.
Thanks ants. Thants.
I have questions.
just bio major things
🤢 i dont envy you
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”
if its in my room, that shitling better gtfo my place. if they just arrived i can usually smell them when theyre around 1m off me. but if they been chilling in the room i can smell them once i enter the room. imagine like walking little turd. the more they are the worse the smell.
wow that is crazy thank you for expanding.
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.
what bricks are you crushing mon
maybe it’s smell of dust, like what you can smell on dusty unpaved road in summer
Nah it’s specifically when they’re crushed. Not gravel smells, that smells different. You never crushed a rock or a brick?
I have, many times, and I don’t think I would describe the smell as “pepper.” It is sharp though.
100%
I can smell them to the point I know when an area has an abundance of ant hills.
I can, they also taste absolutely abhorrent and ruin food they are in for me. It’s a very bitter chemical taste and smell.
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.
Congratulations on your mutation. This one sucks less than the cilantro one.
Haha get rekt sucks to suck!
/s
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.
This just tells me ant particles are constantly flying into my nose and mouth and I don’t have receptors for them. Gross
Don’t think about the non-ant particles, it won’t help.
it’s all I think about
If you smelled poop even if it’s far 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.
Joke’s on you, I dig this literally shit.
haha, touché, I respect your choice of… enjoyment.
Honestly, kind of a blessing. It’s not like you could do much about it if you knew.
I mean, your bed is home to tens of thousands of microscopic bugs as well. I’d rather not smell them.
When you smell a fart, molecules from someone else’s asshole are inside your nose
When you take a dump and feel the smell from the toilet - it’s an actual shit particles reaching your nose and mouth. You eat shit while you shit.
Well I’m already full of shit so tough luck particles, there’s no room
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.
I’ve never heard of insects having a smell, other than like stinkbugs!
Wait are u telling me bugs don’t smell to you?
neither to me, I think. Truth is, I never tried sniffing an ant, I’ll sniff them up.
I don’t remember ever smelling a bug either, unless it was a stink bug
I can smell roaches but that’s it.
I don’t smell stinkbugs, either… Apparently that’s also genetic.
But have you smelled ladybugs? Absolutely foul.
I’ve never actually smelled a stinkbug, now that I think of it. I catch and release by hand for my house without issue. Never noticed a ladybug smell either. Interesting!
The only time I’ve smelt ants is when they get crushed. Are you telling me you could smell an ant trail just by walking into a room?
Are you telling me that if you step on an ant and crush it, you can smell it?! Wtf is going on in this thread??
My mind is being blown so much ITT. I don’t recall any insect ever having a smell, crushed or otherwise.
Ladybugs have a weird smell when you handle them. Smells a bit like earwax.
Also, from the time when I hatched flies as food animals, flies really stink but you don’t normally notice because you don’t smell it when it’s just one. Put 100 flies in a bucket and they STINK.
No idea what’s going on with the ants though. I’m still not convinced this isn’t a hoax.You can smell earwax?!
Yeah, it’s a weird bitter smell. Can’t really compare it to anything else. Except for the deterrent that ladybugs spray, I suppose.
Science.
I mean, I don’t think I can smell them as described, but crushed I can clearly smell the formic acid.
I don’t mean just stepping on an ant. I mean when you were little and climbing a tree or playing on the ground and crushed some ants, smelled your hand to figure out what it was, and it smelled like ants…
I smell them outdoors from quite a long distance.
What a shitty superpower
No doubt… It certainly seems useless so far but when the ant wars start you’ll all want me on your team.
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.
Can you smell them on the floor if you’re standing up? How close do you have to be?
Ya on the floor, outside smells like bugs a bit too (and dirty and a million other things).
I can smell ant hills that are far enough that I can’t see them from an open car window.
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Formic acid does really smells like steel tastes. But I’d blame the nickel for the taste, iron tastes differently.
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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!
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.
Huh that’s interesting…I hate beer, lager and coffee, all everyday adulting things…I wonder if I have this gene.
wait does cofee dosent taste sour to other pepole ?
It tastes really bitter to me. I don’t understand how people can drink it. Tried it black, white, with sugar, without.
Love the smell of coffee beans though. If coffee tasted anything like beans smell I’d be drinking that stuff non stop.
If it does it’s really bad coffee
that is the hipster new generation coffee
Some coffee does.
I have a high sensitivity to sour. It sucks. Apples are often too sour. So it’s not just ants, or bitterness.
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.
Sounds gross lol
It’s not necessarily that you hear more than someone else, but you have the experience to have trained your hearing to discern those sounds.
It’s something I also experience from my time working around machines. Works on all sorts of things.
That makes sense spend enough time around them you’ll become adept to their ways.
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.
Oh yeah, I get that too, where my brain just decides not to decipher spoken words suddenly. At any rate, noise cancelling headphones are awesome.
Have you ever been tested for Sensory Processing Disorder
No, they probably just rolled all of that into the ADHD diagnosis.
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.
You would hate this goddamn bird outside my window that doesn’t shut up from 5:30-10:30 every morning
Haha, I sleep like the dead.
guess that’s why you’re all… maggoty
Lol yeah. Part of it anyways.
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.
Oh yeah? I just made a bird sound. Which bird did imitate?
Bird
Holy shit, it’s legit
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?
Oh yeah? I have a model train behind my back, what model is it?
And I hear everything. Autism I guess.
Big Autism is listening you))
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.
People like to engage with other people.
No we don’t.
You would do well in Finland.
Man I gotta move there… Any recommendations?
Somewhere inside of the area outlined in red here:
Except uusimaa, it’s like the mordor of Finland
Sure, but then do a simple search first and then you can engage with other people with “Guys, I just learned that some people can smell ants!”
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Some people wipe standing up…
Some people can see images and hear voices inside their heads…
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.”
Do you think you could learn how to see in your head? I remember learning how to see 3d in drafting class, I bet you could learn how to see in your thoughts. Like maybe look at something, like a t-shirt, and closing your eyes, then opening them and see if you can continue picturing it? Just a thought, because like I said, I learned how to see 3d.
No, certainly not. It’s a condition known as aphantasia, and isn’t something that can be cured with practice. I have a lifetime of practice in conceptualizing in a different way though. I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything really, just experiencing the world differently. I didn’t even know that I was any different than most until I was an adult, and a friend of mine made me realize it.
Someone with aphantasia might be able to learn how to conceptualize in a different way, but I don’t think you can train what’s not there, any more than a blind person could train themselves to see. There isn’t a lot of study into it though, and I’ve found it difficult to get solid information on my condition, so perhaps there’s more to learn. Why, for example, do I have a very vivid imagination of sounds? I can imagine an entire song in all of its different instruments as if I could hear it, but I can’t even conceive even a little bit of what it means to see something in my head.
I’ve had it explained to me very often by people with varying degrees of sincerity or understanding, and I still don’t quite get it. Is it like dreaming, or like a hallucination, or like an image you can’t really see but still know is there? It’s foreign to me, and no description I’ve heard makes it clear. I dream quite clearly and in color, but that’s like I’m there experiencing it in person. I’d love to learn more about aphantasia, especially since my fiancée has the opposite, hyperphantasia, and it would be nice to more easily collaborate as artists.
What others have found interesting in the past is how I conceptualize spaces around me, especially when imagining things like my DnD campaign that I run. I don’t see things in my head visually, but more have a general special sense of them. I don’t need to visualize my foot or my hand to know where it is. I don’t need to visualize the wall of my room that I’m very familiar with; even with my eyes closed I know my relative position in the space and can find the light switch in the dark, or the fan. It’s the same for my spacial reasoning. I can navigate the world perfectly fine, or conceptualize a fictional DnD battle, not visually, but more like through touch, though that’s not exactly the sensation. I cannot rotate the proverbial cube in my mind, but I can conceive of what another face might feel like, and, if it’s not too TMI, I have a very good mental map of my fiancée’s body, and could draw her accurately, even if I can’t see her.
Thanks for explaining so clearly. I hope someone does their thesis on this stuff, it really is fascinating.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with drafting, but when you draw elevations, it’s a flat version of 3d objects. I couldn’t really read a map until after I learned how to read elevations. You’re sort of pushing through and bringing forward objects from a flat drawing. It’s also a section, so it’s cut through a certain point of a floor plan. I could understand floor plans easily for some reason, but elevations and details were super hard. Then something clicked and I could read maps and all of the different types of drawings. I even remember where I was. Our brains are wild.
Someone with aphantasia might be able to learn how to conceptualize in a different way, but I don’t think you can train what’s not there, any more than a blind person could train themselves to see. There isn’t a lot of study into it though, and I’ve found it difficult to get solid information on my condition, so perhaps there’s more to learn. Why, for example, do I have a very vivid imagination of sounds? I can imagine an entire song in all of its different instruments as if I could hear it, but I can’t even conceive even a little bit of what it means to see something in my head.
That is so fascinating. I think I understand now, I probably couldn’t train myself to do the sound thing. I asked a friend with what you have to tell me what his home looked like growing up and he said it was white. I asked him if he could picture that home when he said it and he told me that no, it was like memorizing times tables, it’s just a fact. It blows my mind how our brains work.
As far as collaborating on the art, don’t discount the sounds, you could focus on that and your fiance could focus on the visuals. What a cool blend of talents.
Thank you for your genuine curiosity! I like talking about things like this, and it’s nice to not be confronted by people telling me I’m wrong about my own mind. As far as my fiancée, we do collaborate using music as well! I’m a musician and play dozens of instruments, all of which I hang around our house among her drawings and paintings. We like to mix her animation and my music.
There are so many quirky things about humans, I would never tell you you’re wrong. I want your sound thing and to keep my visual thing, lol. I was hoping we could learn like that guy who went blind and learned echo location.
Realizing that made me hate books even more.
Books are fine. You just need to find authors who don’t spend two pages describing someone’s clothes, as you won’t remember anything past “pretty tall and dark haired”
I love reading, and I love writing and storytelling. I think books can be for anyone. I wouldn’t let a difference in perception preclude you from enjoying an entire form of media, entertainment, and information. For me, audiobooks work best to hold my attention, as I struggle to sit and read words in front of me without keeping myself busy. It’s not a fit for everyone, and not everyone will like reading, but I think it’s a very simple joy that so many people have had hammered out of them by bad parents, bad teachers, or bad education systems that taught them to dread or hate books and reading. I got back into reading as an adult, and it’s one of the most fulfilling parts of my day.
It’s okay homie… there are dozens of us ;-)
I used to, until it was pointed out that wiping while sitting is better so I switched
How is it “better”?
Keeps your cheeks spread so you don’t mush the poop when you stand up.
Why did you do it that way to begin with? I’m just curious.
Leftovers from when your parents did it for you as a kid that was able to use the toilet but not necessarily able to wipe properly?
That’s my hypothesis anyway
I switched from wiping from the back, to wiping from the front, to dabbing the bidet water off a little bit because bidets are absolutely incredible.
That link is staying blue. Also, gross.
Some people don’t wipe at all. Bidet gang represent!
I can’t smell living ants, but there’s a common species of ant in the US that smells like rotten coconut when squished.
I hope the rotten coconut is not from accumulated nut
But how dies rotten coconut smell?
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it’s like they’re not even paying attention
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I’m not sure about rotten coconut but there are small black ants here in Oklahoma that smell strongly… metallic? to me when I squish then.
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I can only smell them when I kill them 🤷♂️
That’s the formic acid
You’re saying the formic acid is released when the ant loses its form?
Ant go squishy, formic acid go splat?
I wonder if it’s also the entire cocktail of smells they have in store that gets squeezed out
Most likely, but the acid I think has the strongest scent.
