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“It’s true, some people have a very, very sensitive sense of smell, a natural way of identifying scents,” Penot says—but even some world-renowned perfumers do not fall into that category. “I’m not naming names,” he laughs. “I know some perfumers who are very bad at recognizing ingredients in a perfume—really bad. But they’re amazing artists doing beautiful work.”
— Fabrice Penot of Le Labo, quoted in The Scent Detective: How to Sniff Out Fragrances at Elle magazine.
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Chemical identifiers secreted from the genital glands of lemurs, allow them to avoid incest and also to engage in nepotism. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology have identified the smells used by both male and female ring-tailed lemurs to advertize their family ties.
— From Scent signals stop incest in lemurs at Physorg.
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The aroma of an old book is familiar to every user of a traditional library. A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness, this unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents.
— Quoted in Scientists nose out clue to preserving books: their smell at the Guardian.
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Common experience tells us that particular scents of childhood can leave quite an impression, for better or for worse. Now, researchers reporting the results of a brain imaging study online on November 5th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, show that first scents really do enjoy a "privileged" status in the brain.
— From Early Scents Really Do Get 'Etched' In The Brain at Science Daily, with thanks to Ruth for the link!
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The K-9 Unit of the New Jersey Department of Corrections, while training seven recently acquired cell-phone-sniffing dogs, first put a whole bunch of cell-phone parts in a plastic box to create a kind of sachet of cell-phone scent for use in imprinting. The basic, pervasive cell-phone smell that built up in the closed box was powerful—a sweetish, metallic, ozoney, weird robotic reek.
— Ian Frazier in Scratch and Sniff at The New Yorker.