Brennan McIntyre - Smell

So to start off, I think A Natural History of the Senses is a bit dull. Ackerman offers plenty of insight and interesting interpretations of all of the human senses; however, I feel that oftentimes she will drive a point so far that one can lose sight of what the actual point was in the first place. Or, she will bore the reader with so many details that any power initially established by the point is then lost, as seen through her example about perfume companies and Sophia Grojsman's nose. Initially, I thought it very interesting that there is such a thorough process that goes into perfume-making, but by the end I had gotten lost in all the dialogue in her story that it just seemed boring.





Dullness aside, Ackerman does interpret the sense of smell in a very interesting way that I hadn't considered before. Based on her take on how important smell is to savoring life to the fullest and how it basically emphasizes the other senses, I think it's safe to say she'd argue that smell is the most important of all the senses that we possess. Now, I would hate to lose ANY of my senses, or just have any of them be impaired, but I think I'm in agreement with her in that losing smell would certainly be a greater loss than any of the other senses. Ackerman explains that we can only taste a small number of  tastes, but we tend to think we can taste a whole spectrum of them because of how our sense of smell augments our sense of taste. I found this to be a resounding point because I've been aware of how when you're sick and congested, you may have difficulty with tasting things. According to Ackerman, that's effectively what anosmia is, only it's permanent.
Something that amazes me about smell is how vital it is to a multitude of different species out there (us included) and how all of these different species apply it. In terms of using smell for protection, we get sickened if we smell something "bad," "fowl," or "unpleasant." My take on this concept is that we react that way because our body understands that there is a chance that something with a scent like that could be full of diseases and thus, poses a risk to our system. Dogs use scents in a plethora of ways, one of which is identification of territories, which is why they're always pissing on trees, rocks, and that white fence you just painted. They want to signal to other dogs what belongs to them. Sharks use their sense of smell to track down prey, which is rather dangerous for the prey considering that they can smell blood from VERY far away. So in short, I think that smell is an underrated sense that doesn't receive as much credit in today's world as the other senses.