While enhanced smell capabilities have never made a hero on their own, there are a number of animal-resembling superheroes gifted with the ability of super-sniffing. Some notable examples are Sabertooth and Wolverine: Super-smell is an admittedly weird power for some heroes to have, but it definitely comes in handy. What do you think of first when you need to camouflage yourself or be sneaky? Be quiet, stay in the dark, and generally hide yourself from being seen or heard. It doesn’t normally occur to you to disguise your scent unless you know bloodhounds are actively chasing you. So in a situation like this, having enhanced olfactory senses can really throw a wrench into someone else’s plans. Wolverine stays one step ahead of an ambush if the wind is blowing in the right direction, and he’s one of the only people who can detect Mystique through all of her shape-shifting because she can't mask her scent. Smell is also unique in being closely connected to the memory centers of our brain. Seeing a face or hearing a particular song that reminds you of a past event can summon a level of nostalgia, but nothing to match the visceral pull you experience after catching a waft of a familiar perfume. The smell of a baking apple pie could bring back strong memories of the holidays at home, or conversely the scent of shellfish could conjure up a wave of nausea when you remember that time you got food poisoning. Many mammals’ olfactory talents have been recognized by humans, and we’ve trained them to help us detect trace indicators. Bomb and drug sniffing dogs are probably the most familiar to you, but there are also rats that have been trained to smell tuberculosis. And let's not forget about truffle-hunting pigs snooping for delectable fungi. There are some ideas out there of how to turn natural smell receptors into an electronic sensor for commercial application, but for now, we’re limited to training pooches to bark at suspicious luggage. If any smell scientists out there need inspiration for their next project, I have an idea for you: SMELL-O-VISION Seriously. You’ve probably gathered from my posts thusfar that I’m a bit of a cinema junkie. I didn't get caught up in the 3D, high-definition craze that’s been going for the last few years because in many cases visual quality is being valued over the actual quality of the writing and acting, but I appreciate the technological push to bring us more realism in our viewing experiences. And I want us to take it a step further with smell-o-vision! I don’t know how, and I don’t know if much of the average movie-going audience would even want such a thing, but I think it would be awesome. You would feel so immersed in the scene. Directors would have another tool for creating their milieu. And while I know most of you will not agree, it’s the unpleasant odors that are really missing from my experience. My favorite movies bring out dark, strong emotions I'm lucky enough not to feel in my daily life, and what could get that message across better than smelling the dank fumes of poverty or the acrid smoke of war. It would be an incredible resource for documentaries that really want you to feel what others are feeling. If people would rather not have unpleasant odors, pleasant and exotic new scents would also be a boon to cinephiles. Humans have a paucity of vocabulary to describe smells that have never been smelled before, so smell-o-vision could bring new fruits and flowers to life in our scent-memory. And you absolutely must have a rich collection of scents to draw on if you want to sound fancy at a wine tasting. For those of you rolling your eyes at my weird obsession, there are good, solid, medical reasons to work on olfaction and standardizing smell experience/vocabulary. It's been found in recent years that people's sense of smell becomes impaired when they are suffering from a neurodegenerative disease. It's completely logical that senses would suffer as much as the rest of the brain's functions, but we've only just realized that a smell abilities are an effective diagnostic tool for diseases like Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's. Simple questions like "Does pizza smell the same as it used to?" could be physicians' first clue to the existence of a deeper problem in a patient. Just like turning up the volume on your TV is often a sign of hearing loss, having to adjust the scent projector on your smell-o-vision could be a reminder to visit your neurologist. The first attempts at this were made in the 60s where the theatre was rigged with jets that released over 30 different odors. Audience members complained that the jets were too loud and the scent would only reach them a several minutes after the action. In more recent decades these problems were remedied with special scratch-n-sniff cards released with the movie. Easy to enjoy in your home at your own pace! I definitely remember a few TV shows and movies doing special promotions with scratch-n-sniff cards that I begged my parents to get for me. Totally worth it. I suppose as far as biomimicry goes however, we’ll more likely be focusing on something closer the Spleen’s powers to achieve smell-projection. Reference:
Ruan, Y., Zheng, X.-Y., Zhang, H.-L., Zhu, W. and Zhu, J. (2012), Olfactory dysfunctions in neurodegenerative disorders. J. Neurosci. Res., 90: 1693–1700. doi: 10.1002/jnr.23054
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Alanna DurkinExploring the realm of biologically inspired design one superhero example at a time, with some other natural sciences mixed in. Archives
September 2016
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