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Primer on Smell 嗅觉入门 In addition to bringing out the flavor of food, what does the sense of smell do for us? 嗅觉除了能让我们感受到食物的气味外，还能做什么？ Smell “gives us information about place, about where we are,” says Randall Reed, a Johns Hopkins University professor whose specialty is the sense of smell. And smell tells us about people. “Whether we realize it or not, we collect a lot of information about who is around us based on smell,” says Reed. 美国约翰霍普金斯大学研究嗅觉的专家Randall Reed教授指出，气味能提供给我们关于位置，关于我们在哪儿，以及有关人的信息。“无论我们是否意识到，我们能根据气味收集到许多关于谁在我们身边的信息”， Reed讲道。 Even at a distance, odors can warn us of trouble — spoiled food, leaking gas, or fire. “It’s a great alert,” offers Donald Leopold, a doctor at Johns Hopkins. For example, if something in the oven is burning, everyone in the house knows it. 即使还隔着一段距离，气味就能提醒我们注意很多麻烦：变质的食物，煤气泄漏，或是火灾。“它是一个很好的警告”， 约翰霍普金斯大学的博士Donald Leopold说道。比方说，烤箱中有东西烧焦了，屋内的每个人都会知道。 With just a simple scent, smell can also evoke very intense emotion. Let’s say, for example, that the smell is purple petunias. These flowers have a rich spiciness that no other petunia has. Now let’s imagine that your mother died when you were three, and she used to have a flower garden. You wouldn’t need to identify the smell or to have conscious memories of your mother or her garden. You would feel sad as soon as you smelled that spicy odor. 仅仅是简单的气味，嗅觉就会引起强烈的情感。比如说那种气味就是紫喇叭花。它的气味中有一种其他喇叭花没有的香味。现在我们想象一下，你的母亲在你三岁时就去世了，她曾经拥有一座花园。你不必去辨认那种气味或有意识地回忆起你的母亲或者她的花园，只要你闻到那种紫喇叭花的香味，你就会感到伤感。 Compared with animals, how well do people detect smelts? 与动物相比，人类感知气味的能力有多强？ That depends on what you mean by “how well”. We are low on receptor cells ： current estimates say that humans have roughly five million smell-receptor cells, about as many as a mouse. A rat has some 10 million, a rabbit 20 million, and a bloodhound 100 million. 那要取决于你所谓的“多强”是什么意思。我们人类的受体细胞很少，目前估计人类有大概五百万个嗅觉受体细胞，差不多和一只小鼠的一样多。一只大鼠大约有一千万个，一只兔子有两千万个，一只寻血犬有一亿个。 Reed says that, across species, there is a relatively good corr