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Can y’all who can’t smell ants taste ants?
Yep. Never knew people could smell them until today. I asked my wife and she can smell them. But they taste very sour.
Sour-and-soapy or just sour?
Just sour.
I can only smell them when I kill them 🤷♂️
That’s the formic acid
I wonder if it’s also the entire cocktail of smells they have in store that gets squeezed out
Most likely, but the acid I think has the strongest scent.
You’re saying the formic acid is released when the ant loses its form?
Ant go squishy, formic acid go splat?
Can i genetically engineer the capability? Surly crisper could do it?
Is it the formic acid? I bet it is.
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.
Sometimes ants can’t smell ants either and you get supercolonies
Great, now im gonna accidently inhale some ants as I try to smell them.
So, what do ants smell like?
It’s a very unique smell and hard to explain, but nothing on earth smells similar.
They smell kind of like blood and iron to me.
It’s probably the formic acid they have as blood… If you crush them then smell the remains it’s pretty strong and specific.
Anyone can smell crushed ants.
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:
Wait I have that one! My dad has it too, but my brother doesn’t. All three of us are colorblind too lol.
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.
I love cilantro, but I got the celery tastes bitter and spicy gene. So many people tell me it’s tasteless but it has a strong, terrible taste to me.
Bitter and spicy kinda sounds like an allergy my dude
Celery tastes like that too me as well, but no allergy. I can eat it with no negative effects, other than the fact that I’ve had to taste celery.
It’s just that a lot of mild allergies sound just like that, no big obvious ill effects
Celery man. Everyone tells me it has no taste, but to me it tastes like an entire lawn’s worth of grass clippings compressed into a stick. Extremely pungent.
Same with cucumbers. They taste awfully strong and bitter to me.
Look up the “TAS2R bitter taste receptor gene family”. It’s a fun little group of genes that control how well bitterness is detected.
I am a moderate bitter taster. So I do not like celery (mildly unpleasant flavor) and prefer cucumbers that contain the recessive bi gene that stops the production of cucubitacin in the plant. The ones that contain the bt gene, the skin gets too bitter for me. This gene mostly stops the cucubitacin production in the fruit but not the plant.
Your celery description seems apt to me, but for me it’s much less pungent. It’s actually super mild for me, so I don’t mind it. I actually quite like celery.
Yeah I really don’t like celery. Cucumbers are pretty good if they’re peeled, but yeah they have a very strong taste to me, and the peel is very bitter
Any time someone tells you something is “tasteless” you should feel free to discard all of their food opinions or give them a covid test
Just to signal boost the other guy that sounds a lot like a food allergy friend
I think I have half of that gene (2/3, cilantro is nice), fresh celery tastes salty and spicy. If it’s old, then it tastes like water.
I love cilantro but one time I tasted the soap flavor. I had done a stir fry with cilantro and left the spoon in the still hot pot and there had been some cilantro stuck to the bottom of the spoon that sat there and cooked for as long as it took for the big pot to cool down. Then when I was doing dishes I picked up the spoon and I saw big bunch of cilantro so I ate it and it was horribly nasty and tasted like straight up hand soap. I thought for sure that some soap fell or splashed onto it but no it was just the cilantro. Never happened again either.
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…
My grandfather had low cholesterol no matter what. It was always perfect. This man ate more bacon and had more buttermilk and cornbread than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.
I have to watch mine pretty closely. Well, I should, but I’ll just die horribly and early I guess. The alcohol will get me first anyway.
Hah, my grandfather had heart problems and very high cholesterol so we gave him such a hard time for eating unhealthy food. But now I have been a vegetarian for almost twenty years (I try to avoid eggs and dairy too) and my cholesterol is just as high as his was, unless I take medications. So we should have just let him eat whatever he wanted to…
TIL about the artificial sweetener thing, this explains a lot. I have never been able to understand people enjoying diet soda.
Dude, same, and this is the first time I’ve heard of it. I thought the Diet Dr. Pepper commercials were just being cheeky when trying to compare it to dessert.
have you tried ants?
Look at Triglyceride to HDL ratio from the basic test, cholesterol is mostly about statins these days (sugar/carbs in the past), which only help mortality in ppl who’ve had heart attacks. Look into it.
I find that most sweeteners have the aftertaste, like Canderel and Sweetex, but Hermesetas taste fine. It might be worth trying a few brands and seeing if any work for you
I believe that’s all on the same gene
The Frech have this good phrase, L’esprit de l’escalier
Cilantro tasted like soap to me until my wife described it as lemony, and it suddenly tasted different and now I like cilantro. Senses are weird
Cognitive Modulation of Olfactory Processing: Neuron
We showed how cognitive, semantic information modulates olfactory representations in the brain by providing a visual word descriptor, “cheddar cheese” or “body odor,” during the delivery of a test odor (isovaleric acid with cheddar cheese flavor) and also during the delivery of clean air. Clean air labeled “air” was used as a control. Subjects rated the affective value of the test odor as significantly more unpleasant when labeled “body odor” than when labeled “cheddar cheese.” In an event-related fMRI design, we showed that the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)/medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) was significantly more activated by the test stimulus and by clean air when labeled “cheddar cheese” than when labeled “body odor,” and the activations were correlated with the pleasantness ratings. This cognitive modulation was also found for the test odor (but not for the clean air) in the amygdala bilaterally.
I think it’s great how a screenshot of comment about a tiktok video is leading to some pretty great discussion.
If I eat cilantro by itself and focus on the idea of it tasting like soap, I can kinds taste it. It still tastes good to me, just with a hint of soapiness. It’s not enough to ruin it for me, and I have to be looking for it.
I sneeze from sunlight, luckily it’s only the first time for the day or very bright light.
I have a slightly different version of this. I get sneezing fits when too full. It’s genetic and happens to most people on one side of my family. Thanksgiving is always fun.
wait, not everyone gets that?
Nope, i dont remember the occurence rate tho. Just watch the video if u wanna know more lol
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.
Yep same here! It’s nice when you feel a sneeze coming on and then it stops, you can kinda force it to happen!
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 that’s a genetic quirk? I do that shit all the time with “the sneeze that won’t sneeze”
Sure is! It’s my favourite superpower.
I have this. Mildly annoying.
Maybe not genetically, but fun fact about sneezing-quirks: There exists "Sneezing induced by sexual ideation or orgasm. Source: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=2084455232396039941&hl=de&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&t=1716906331494&u=%23p%3D-Y8j_fJVLLsJ
Wait, I’m not the only one?? Amazing!
Me: – Seeing bright light – coughing – thinking certain sexy thoughts
Brain: “Make her sneeze!”
I have sunlight-sneezing, my thoughts are spoken word, I can read in dreams, the dress is gold, and I alway hear “laurel.”
What others are there?
Wait, you can read in dreams? The letters don’t constantly change?
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 honestly love that smell. It’s relaxing.
The sneezing one must be an extreme case of our normal reactions, because I read years ago that if you’re on the verge of a sneeze, and it’s not happening, you should look at a bright light. 50% of the time, it works every time.
That’d be me. Nobody else I know does it, either. I try to explain it and they’re like “yeah, I try to look up at a light to help sneeze” and that’s just not it.
I have the sun sneezes
Actually it also triggers if go from really dark to really bright like turning on the bathroom light at night
I have the sunlight sneeze. I would much rather be able to smell ants.
This feels like a shitty superpower what-if.
100%
I can smell them to the point I know when an area has an abundance of ant hills.
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?
I have, many times, and I don’t think I would describe the smell as “pepper.” It is sharp though.
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.
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.
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 dont envy you
I have questions.
just bio major things
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.
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.
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.
Ants have a scent?
I can only smell them when they’re crawling in my nose
Yeah same, I’ve been trying to find less stinky ants for my morning ant snort
But… How do you even know you can smell ants? Why did you try it? Or can you smell them from meters away?
Aunt smell is worse trust me
Depends on the aunt.
