Death’s Scent: Study Shows Body Feels End Near – Starting in Nose
The Smell of Death
One thing in life that every human will experience is death. Despite the universal nature of this experience, there is still much mystery surrounding it.
People don’t like being in the dark about things, and perhaps that’s why the idea of death frightens so many people. Research, however, shows that while death remains largely a mystery, some things about it are becoming clearer.
What science cannot explain, people often refer to as a ‘sixth sense.’ And sometimes scientific research comes out to confirm what people have suspected for a long time with their sixth sense.
According to research, when someone dies, their body immediately begins to decompose emitting putrescine into the surroundings. Putrescine is a toxic and foul-smelling odor that people can, on an unconscious level, recognize as a rotting smell. And when the human brain detects this smell, it immediately responds to death.
Researcher Arnaud Wisman of the University of Kent’s School of Psychology in Canterbury, UK, and Ilan Shira of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, Arkansas, shared that people, like animals, can also smell odors and react to them. This is an important survival tactic that has developed in various animal species. So when people encounter putrescine, they react consciously or unconsciously to it.
The researchers conducted experiments showing that when people are exposed to the smell of putrescine, they run away in the same way animals do in similar circumstances. “We don’t know why we find someone’s smell pleasant (or unpleasant), and we are usually not aware of how smell influences our emotions, preferences, and attitudes,” explained Wisman and Shira.
“It is difficult to think of a smell as frightening,” claimed other researchers. But it is not untrue that smells make people more aware of their surroundings.
Sexual pheromones, defined as odors produced by males or females, also have an impact on human behavior, usually eliciting a response from another human with the goal of mating.
“Putrescine conveys a different type of message than pheromones, but people’s responses to putrescine (avoidance and hostility) indeed seem to be the opposite of responses to many sexual pheromones,” explained a researcher.
But unlike other smells, people are not consciously aware of detecting this odor and their response is likely unconscious. So it seems that our nose can help us figure out if there is death or perhaps ‘danger’ nearby.
It is always so fascinating to learn about how people work and how our subconscious reacts to things we may not even notice! Share this with others so they are also aware of this fascinating discovery.
