Paula’s news
06/16/2021 5:30 AM, By Philipp Brandstädter – Print article Send email
The olfactory cells of animals are even more sensitive than those of humans
The sense of smell plays an even greater role in the animal kingdom than it does in us humans. Many animals need a particularly good nose to find food or choose partners. The absolute smell specialists live underwater.
BERLIN. See, hear, feel, smell, taste. These are our five senses with which we perceive our environment. It would be difficult for us to do without a meaning. But what if we had to? We humans have particularly specialized in seeing and hearing. But our sense of smell is also important. It protects us from dangers like fire or gas. It lets us recognize food that has gone bad.
For many animals, the sense of smell is even more important. They discover food, partners and enemies with their nose. And many of them rely on them almost entirely. Over millions of years animals have developed very different and sophisticated olfactory organs for their sense of smell.
Sensitive sensory cells on the antennae
“Ants have their sensitive sensory cells on their antennae,” says veterinarian André Schüle. “They have several scent glands through which they communicate with their fellow species.” This is the name of a scent: Come here, there is something to eat! The crawlers also recognize each other by their smell. Because every people has its own.
Mammals, on the other hand, have their olfactory cells in their noses. The olfactory mucous membrane is in it. For us humans it is only about the size of a postage stamp. We can smell it with it, but not particularly great. Many animals have a much better nose for this.
“One of the reasons for this is that the olfactory mucous membrane has a much larger surface,” says the veterinarian. Thus, fragrances can stick to many more sensory cells. Dogs have about twenty times more olfactory cells than humans due to the mucous membrane that is unfolded in their snout. And the sensory cells themselves are even more sensitive than those of humans.
“In this way dogs can track down things that we do not sense with our senses,” explains André Schüle. Sometimes people use that too. Trained dogs help the police track down substances or search for people in need with rescue workers. But not only the dogs have great nose. André Schüle says: “Researchers have observed that polar bears can smell whether a seal is swimming under a thick ice floe.” But animals have even finer noses, from which one might not expect that at all. “Eels and sharks, for example, filter scents out of the water,” explains the veterinarian. In sharks, for example, it works like this: their olfactory organ lies in capsules that are located in the nasal chambers of the snout. The olfactory cells are in the capsules.
Odor particles in the water are recognized
The nasal chambers each have an opening for outgoing and incoming water. Odor particles that are transported with the water are recognized in the sensory cells and passed on to the brain. Such fragrances are proteins from animals, blood for example. “Sharks would find a single drop of blood in a swimming pool.” This is how sharks can pinpoint their prey. Even in the pitch black depths of the sea.
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