- cross-posted to:
- autism@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- autism@lemmy.world
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I can smell ants, but I dont think they smell that bad. The smell is hardly ever strong enough to be unpleasant. Also, in the region of the world I live in, if you start smelling ants but don’t see them anywhere, it means it’s gonna rain.
“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.
Yes it works! I can eat soap now
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?!
My anime head sees „quirk” think MHA lmao
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.
I recently had to close my store for an hour, because I was the only one working and couldn’t breath due to one customers bad hygiene. People treat me like I’m overly sensitive or making up my discomfort, but to me it feels like being suffocated.
Also I can totally smell roaches, they smell worse than any other thing in existence. Never smelled an ant though. Did not know that was possible.
I recently had to close my store for an hour, because I was the only one working and couldn’t breath due to one customers bad hygiene.
I don’t even have the greastest sense of smell, I might even consider it impaired, but personal experience begs me to suggest never applying at your local public library then.
Libraries are havens for unhoused people. They don’t have to pay to sit in the air conditioning and read a book.
If we were a society about helping people we would have just installed showers at the libraries ages ago.
I work at a library and they wouldn’t let us install them when we built a new building. We do though have a place nearby that lets people clean up but not stay there.
Did not know that was possible.
Same, but I’m starting to think you need a pretty sizable infestation in a nearby wall for this to be a thing.
Bedbugs smell worse than roaches. Roaches will make me leave a place. Bedbugs make me run in terror.
I refuse to find this out.
Best way to get rid of bedbugs is by turning your house into a temporary sauna. Ensuring everywhere reaches some 50º Celsius will kill all the little fuckers.
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 would guess it’s just related to teenagers getting body odors and not knowing yet that they have to deal with them.
Maybe, but I don’t remember everyone stinking when I was a teen. Or teenagers in general stinking any more than anyone else now.
Yes it’s a fact that obese people smell worse than fit people, so if it was a marathon runners convention and everyone actually bathed daily, I’m sure going without deodorant wouldn’t be an issue. Too much fucking might be an issue if the majority of the women aren’t on hormonal birth control.
But I think the issue with anime conventions isn’t lack of deodorant, it’s thinking a shower is something you take every 4-7 days, and ‘eww don’t touch your buttcrack to clean it, that’s nasty!’
I may get flack from the twox crowd for this comment, but talking to my fiance was like talking to a guy when she got off hormonal birth control. Conversation is just… chill now.
That’s probably the next big “oops, we fucked up bad the last 50 years, but men’s birth control is hard!”
I can smell cockroaches and periods. It’s weird, but I can for some reason
I take testosterone which makes my sense of pheromone smell increase like crazy (not just sweat, I can go into a truck stop late at night and tell if someone was in there somewhere and peed and how hydrated they were, or if someone just had sex in the shower in there… or just an orgasm.)
Sometimes I’ll walk into our own house bathroom half an hour after my fiance left for work and get an overwhelming woah, she’s definitely on her period right now smell or conversely, “oh yeah, tonight could be a fun night.”
Our oldest started showering in the mornings before school, and its become a subconscious game (I think, to him) of who can get in the shower first, because I do not want to smell his… shower… my entire shower.
Humans are capable of absolutely incredible senses when they’re finely tuned. But our senses are so out of whack, literally, in so many different ways we barely have concepts or words for yet. We have known about, as one example, estrogen-raising chemicals being in plastics leeching directly into our bodies and soil and water and food supplies for over 30 years now (BPA), (when estrogen levels rise, testosterone levels lower, and vice versa. same is true for many core bodily systems). Then around 2010 they did a study that found some of these new lightly tested BPA-free alternative plastics released even more estrogen into the system than BPA did. How’s that for a chucklefuck
Plastics, and then leaded gasoline, and then PFASs shortly after (or before) that… well, when a molecule or series of molecules is found that greatly benefits civilization in some way, people will die. People will sit under oath in front of the supreme court swearing they had no idea how harmful their products were.
It’s very unfortunate, because the species are being modified in so many unforseen ways. Not just humans. Alex Jones got meme’d so hard for the chemicals are turning the fuckin’ frogs gay!
I’m not sure what I’m ranting about now. I’m just sad for our species and those species affected by us and unable to do anything about it. It’s never as simple as it’s ALL profits and follow the money! because we’ve been able to make so much progress as humans through the use of breakthrough technologies like PFASs and plastic. But, at what cost? Our current methodology is to let the major corporations sell these new breakthrough molecules far and wide, and then in 5 years or 5 decades we start to see mainstream scientific acceptance that “okay, it’s really bad, we have to do something about this”…
Sure, though, it did some good in the meantime.
Thanks high testosterone bro. Your comment made me remember when I was 18ish and would not drink soda, barely eat sugar, wake up to do exercises on the bedroom floor… That was my prime and for a reason. I’ll try to go by next month reducing my sugar intake at least and do pushups when I wake up, start challenging myself again.
Take it or leave it but my advice (sometimes I take it sometimes I’m a hypocrite) but tomorrow never comes. Fuck next month. There is no reason for you to wait to eat less sugar. If it’s a matter of finances, get a head of romaine lettuce and some carrots and much away for a few days. Feel the sugar withdrawal as your body freaks out wondering what has changed and starts realigning those neurons. After a few days of that, a generic slice of sandwich bread will taste like cake. Use that wasted $30 of high sugar snacks and food as motivation to stop eating this poison. If it’s purely a waste issue, find the first homeless person you see and give them a big bag of high sugar food. Even if its frozen meals they’ll give them to their buddies and use the microwaves at a convenience store and eat like kings for day.
Honestly, a big part of this comment was me talking to myself, but not about sugar. But if it helps you, I’m happy.
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.
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.
and fill a spray bottle with Lysol that she would spray around to give the smell of a clean bathroom
Depending upon the formula of Lysol, that’s actually worse than not doing anything.
We’ve got a brand called Lyzol and that seems to be the same formula as Lysol, before it got regulated in the US. If this were to be sprayed, I’d consider the area poisoned.Lyzol
This contains some chemical that lingers even if you wash the floor with water afterwards and slowly produces volatile compounds, and stays for > a week. This gives me (and a few other people on quora) a headache. Again, from reports on quora, the smelly substance also tends to jump onto one’s hand, on touching the surface, making it disastrous for cooking.
Nowadays, I use Dettol disinfectant liquid, which stops smelling after about 1/2 hour of wind.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.
In some areas (depends on local health dept.) restaurant kitchens are required to have weak bleach solutions around for sanitizing food prep surfaces.
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.
heavy perfume …
“I don’t care what you smell”
This is one reason I stopped eating lunch with other people. Some people use so much of Deodorant (oh the irony in the name) that the volatile compounds get adsorbed onto the surface of fluids in the mouth and then get tasted and also go into the stomach. All I’d say is - They taste bad.
I don’t think those chemicals are supposed to be edible.
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.
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.
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?
Smell is how ants communicate with one another so maybe these ant sniffers will be the first humans who can speak ant.
Ants part of a super-organism often compared to a computer, so probably these people are sniffing their information packets.
https://academic.oup.com/ae/article/61/2/85/1756864
https://www.livescience.com/why-ants-smell-weird
However, the sense of smell in humans is far less developed, and there has been recent controversy over what, exactly, the odorous house ant smells like. This species belongs to a large group of ants whose members are thought to smell like blue cheese (Forney and Markovetz 1971) [link is direct 3.0 mb .pdf download from elsevier], yet numerous online sources report their odor as “rancid butter,” “cleaning solution,” or, most commonly, “rotten coconuts.”
Specifically, the house
hippoant.*The actual factual paper was actually literally published in 2015, no cap.
At the same time, Penick had people rate what they thought the ant smelled like. Most people said blue cheese, but some thought it smelled like rotted coconut. So Penick rotted a coconut in his backyard and found a mold growing on it that, sure enough, is the same mold (Penicillium roqueforti) that’s used to produce blue cheese. Another mystery, solved.
So American house ants, rotten coconuts and blue cheese all smell the same. Life is weird.
Uh oh. They smell like blue cheese? That means they smell delicious!
Thats what i was thinking, i love bluecheese!
Especially Blue Stilton. By far my favorite cheese!
Uhh… Wait. I may be able to smell them. Those descriptions are making me realize some things.
cant say for ant. but i can smell cockroaches
spoiler
asdfasfasfasfas
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?
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.
I suggest not eating them, but I don’t want to tell you what to do.
Who the fuck is out here censoring fuck?
You can’t say shit or dead or suicide or fuck anymore because the internet has become C O R P O R A T E
I am already petitioning for a de-federalization with any instance that allows those swears. Not in my good Christian Fediverse!
Please spoiler your comment
Stop fucking cussing you goddamn asshole.
because its a fucking swear word
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
Particles are disgusting
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.
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
I mean, your bed is home to tens of thousands of microscopic bugs as well. I’d rather not smell them.
It’s like me figuring out after 23 years that most people don’t sneeze looking at the sun
Same for me. If I feel a sneeze coming on I look at a bright light to hurry it up. I thought this was normal but appetite isn’t.
Bright lights, especially flashing ones, stimulate the same nerve cluster that the urge to sneeze comes from and can help trigger a sneeze that is loading. Some people are more susceptible to that stimulus than others.
Flashing lights. I have to try that now.
Years ago me and my sister walked through our newly built town centre together. They had installed bright white stone on the ground and both of us couldn’t stop sneezing (sunny day, stone reflects sun back up). It’s not as shiny now it’s not new but I hate walking through that area to this day.
My usual strategy to force a sneeze over the edge is to look up with my eyes(not at the neck, more effective) and put a flashlight on strobe and it is highly effective.
Another funny human quirk is the clinically proven most effective method to cure hiccups. Especially great if your partner has them and you are willing to help. It doesn’t matter how the stimulation happens either, but they were more appropriate with their testing methodology than a couple needs to be.
There are a couple other ones, like cilantro tastes like soap (took me some time to figure that one out) and apparently one that makes pee stink when you eat asparagus, and you need another to actually smell the pee stink (I don’t know if it’s true, I just got em all and collected info in the internet).
Cilantro tastes like bathwater/ wet washcloth to me.
I am so sorry for your loss. Cilantro tastes amazinging fresh and plantey in a great way, for those of us without a genetic defect.
Do you taste that with cooked cilantro in a dish or just with raw cilantro?
Bro that’s not a defect, it means they can actually smell some molecules you can’t.
Another famous one… bookstores make a lot of people need to poop. https://www.buzzfeed.com/farrahpenn/urge-to-poop-in-bookstore-mariko-aoki-phenomenon
That was a crappy article.
TLDR: in a bookshop you relax, maybe sit down, maybe have tea was the reason…
do you mean like in the morning when the sun rays hit your nose you must sneeze?
He means the photic sneeze reflex.
🎶 When-the-sun hits-your-nose and you sneeze un-con-trolled IN THE MORNIIIING 🎶
I’m glad I’m not the only one that thought of that song. XD
Doesn’t its scientific name is some goofy SNEEZE acronym too?
The photic sneeze reflex (also known as ACHOO syndrome, a contrived acronym for Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst)
Biting into a piece of dark chocolate for the first time will cause me to quickly sneeze similar to how people do when the step out into the sun or inhale black pepper.
Wow, interesting
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!
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??
Science.
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.
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.
Blue cheese? They smell like blood and iron to me.
Formic acid does really smells like steel tastes. But I’d blame the nickel for the taste, iron tastes differently.
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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.
Likely red/green colour blind, less cones but more rods (better resolution, also night vision). Your ancestors may have done night watch in the village or been hunters.
duping above so you read.
Yes, I do have severe deuteranomaly. Diagnosed when I was 6 years old.
I’ve read quite a lot about this, there are many cases where red/green blind people have exhibited above average night vision.
I was also very good at spotting camouflage, since the patterns were designed to fool people with normal colour vision. The only time my colour blindness was a disadvantage was in a contest between regiments, I had to direct artillery fire as fast as possible and the targets were big red boxes in front of the treeline.
Our lieutenant lost his shit when he realized that he had a colour blind forward observer. We still won the contest, my squad handled the measurements impeccably and I verified them on the map. There was discussion of transfering me to other duties after this, but when I asked “Sir, how many big red box targets are there are in real war?” they quickly dropped the issue.
During my military service I also discovered that I had exceptional night vision. I never stumbled in the dark forest and I could even read maps when others couldn’t see shit. I didn’t pay much attention to this quirk, but my commanding officer realized this and put it to good use. The following overnight recon patrols on foot and skis felt endless.
Mmm yes I solved that problem by being a mortar guy in headquarters company. They had access to far better scouts than me.
Likely red/green colour blind, less cones but more rods (better resolution, also night vision). Your ancestors may have done night watch in the village or been hunters.
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 think I’ve read the latter is due to a higher concentration of rods in your eye.
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.
It’s seem to be the same as with cilantro a genetic trait that some people have and other don’t
https://academic.oup.com/ae/article/61/2/85/1756864?login=false
Dunno if that a good source as everything i found about that exept for thos page talked about the tiktok post and not science
Tldr : ( i did not read the article in full ) the smell is described as a moldy pina colada
I’d say it’s more like a blend of vinegar and soap.
You never stop learning something about yourself and why others couldn’t comprehend what I tasted there.
I have an (untested) hypothesis that people who get the “soapy” taste of cilantro also smell stinkbugs. When I squish a stinkbug it reeks of cilantro’s “soapy” taste. I remember reading somewhere that they’re the same type of chemicals.
I love cilantro and don’t smell any bug so maybe
Some people wipe standing up…
It has never occurred to me to sit while wiping
So you stand up and let the shit spread further?
Eat more fiber.
More of a squat, I don’t stand up straight or anything.
So the popular option is to continue sitting and put your hand under to wipe?
I tilt one way.
Then wash my hands.
Lift just one side so your buttocks spread, then reach from the side to wipe. All the while, the seat carries (most of) your weight.
You’re already sitting though…
I used to, until it was pointed out that wiping while sitting is better so I switched
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
How is it “better”?
Keeps your cheeks spread so you don’t mush the poop when you stand up.
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!
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!”
TikTok isn’t a great place for conversation. But then again, neither is Facebook any more. Public posts on Facebook have commentary that makes the old YouTube comments look downright intelligent and engaging.
Same as asparagus wee. Man, when anyone has eaten asparagus I can smell it before I enter the door to the bathroom. When I have eaten it myself, I’m partly horrified and partly morbidly fascinated. What the fuck is up with only some people being able to smell it.
My record for pee smelling after eating asparagus is under 20 minutes.
That’s the same record I have for you!
Glad you’re keeping up on me 😊
