“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.”
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 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.
No anime conventions for you unless you wear a gas mask!
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 can smell cockroaches and periods. It’s weird, but I can for some reason
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.
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.
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.
Wait, is that true? Is someone able to smell ants?
There are lots of weird genetic traits. Sneezing triggered by sunlight is another funny one.
Veritasium video on that one:
I got the “cilantro tastes like soap” gene personally. Would much rather have gotten the, “Always remember where I left my car keys” gene, or maybe the, “Come up with witty retorts on the spot instead of two hours later in the shower” one.
At least you don’t have my “sky-high cholesterol no matter what you eat” gene.
Also artificial sweeteners have an unpleasant chemical aftertaste that lingers for a long time. Apparently that’s generic too…
TIL about the artificial sweetener thing, this explains a lot. I have never been able to understand people enjoying diet soda.
Still can’t believe that some people are unable to smell rain coming in the summer!
People used to make fun of me all the time for sniffing and saying “smells like it’s going to rain soon”. Couldn’t even tell you what it smells like… It just smells like the concept of it starting to rain
I’ve met others who knew exactly what I was talking about, but not many
Is that petrichor, or is that after rain?
Petrichor is after the rain, also an amazing smell! But sometimes there’s also a distinct note before summer rain starts. Similar to petrichor, but different.
I have that! Sneezed twice today because of bright sunlight. It can sometimes also be triggered voluntarily by looking at a bright light. You can’t trigger it multiple times in a row though. I suspect this is because sinuses need to recover from the shock of the sneeze.
I can sneeze several times in a row if a light is bright enough. I’ve even triggered it just thinking of the sun, a few times.
wait, not everyone gets that?
Smell is how ants communicate with one another so maybe these ant sniffers will be the first humans who can speak ant.
cant say for ant. but i can smell cockroaches
spoiler
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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
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.
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.
I’m convinced these people are just making it up, I’ve been alive nearly 40 years and not once heard of this being a thing.
I mean, they probably DO smell - but like I’ve never gotten on my hands and knees and sniffed any bug up close. Maybe these people are more sensitive to smells and can pick them up yards away - or a whole colony?
But ya it’s weird that I’ve never heard of this at all. I had heard of people born with tails or horns, females with beards, color blindness, tiger stripes on skin, the asparagus thing, rain man, hemaphrodites, on and on…
But today I learned ants smell ;)
I’ve never heard of insects having a smell, other than like stinkbugs!
I can smell wasps nests. The queen odor is very strong to me. But other smells people notice are lost on me.
And I hear everything. Autism I guess.
This thread makes me glad Im bad with regular smells, let alone ant pheromones and shit like that. Downside is I cant tune out sounds, I always hear everything full blast
My weird “paranormal” quirk is knowing when someone is sick by smell. My nose is usually blocked up and I can barely smell flowers but for some reason I can just tell when someone is incubating some sickness that will make them bedridden the next day.
No idea how it works. I just smell “sick” - it’s kind of this warm earthy ground smell. I can even smell it on myself sometimes and I’ll know I need to take a day off tomorrow. My theory is I can smell something off in the skin temperature.
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.
Holy shit. IPAs make so much more sense now!
Huh that’s interesting…I hate beer, lager and coffee, all everyday adulting things…I wonder if I have this gene.
wait does cofee dosent taste sour to other pepole ?
It tastes really bitter to me. I don’t understand how people can drink it. Tried it black, white, with sugar, without.
Love the smell of coffee beans though. If coffee tasted anything like beans smell I’d be drinking that stuff non stop.
This makes me wonder all the weird shit we can’t detect just because of our genes. Like I read about this one women who could smell dementia. And to think birds can see UV light and its theorized they can see the fucking earth’s magnetic field which is how they can tell which why is north and south.
Which ants? All ants?
It’s like me figuring out after 23 years that most people don’t sneeze looking at the sun
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).
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.
Holy shit I thought I was either full of shit or a mutant freak. I’m happy to be a mutant freak.
I feel so validated right now you guys have no idea.
Some people wipe standing up…
I used to, until it was pointed out that wiping while sitting is better so I switched
Some people can see images and hear voices inside their heads…
It really fucked me up when I realized that “picture this” wasn’t an entirely figurative saying, and everyone else does actually see stuff in their “mind’s eye.”
It has never occurred to me to sit while wiping
So you stand up and let the shit spread further?
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?
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.
Eat more fiber.
Same, thinking about it the idea of putting my hand in the bowl to do that is grossing me out too. Do you go in from the front or the back or do you kind of lean over?
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.
