CrowdScience: Why Can’t We All Smell The Same Things?

We may take our ability to smell for granted, but it’s a far more complex sense than many people realise. Listener Annabel wants Crowdscience to investigate why perfume makes her queasy, so Anand Jagatia sets out to discover why we can’t all agree when we follow our noses.

He gets a whiff of the world’s stinkiest flower – and finds he rather enjoys it – then asks what’s happening in the brain when we love or hate a scent.

But could our different perceptions about this under-appreciated sense actually come down to a lack of words to describe it? He hears about one culture which has developed its own language for smell.

• Presented by Anand Jagatia
• Produced by Marijke Peters for BBC World Service

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