While elemental sulphur itself doesn't smell, this odour- of sulphur dioxide - is only one of a panoply of stinks that sulphur compounds can produce.
Participants were asked to scratch and sniff each odour and then answer three questions: first, odour detection: did you smell any scent?
In other words, the smell of the previously punished odour does not itself trigger escape, but gives direction to an escape which is otherwise triggered – namely by the buzz.
The most familiar dilemma, though, does concern body odour: do you tell the colleague to their face or leave a can of RightGuard on their desk anonymously?
On the upside, a bit of body odour does wonders for safeguarding your personal space (all that queuing).
However, in the case of salmon, changes in the sensitivity of the olfactory receptors are important, but the increase in sensitivity to the environment-specific odour does not occur until the salmon is ready to return to its home waters, two or more years after imprinting occurred.
But many residents say the odour does not offend them as much as you might expect.
In contrast, tadpoles conditioned with salamander odour or newt odour did not respond differently to the three odours (F2,29 = 0.04, P = 0.92 and F2,28 = 0.98, P = 0.44, respectively).
Although other insect species may have evolved sensory channels dedicated to DMNT detection, our results demonstrate that detection of ecologically highly relevant odours does not require these channels, but instead can be encoded via combinatorial suppression of odour-evoked responses.
"The association of cities and their odours does seem to be gaining in interest," she says – adding that last year, the Visit York tourist authority produced a scratch-and-sniff book highlighting odours around the city, including the smell of a ghost.
