Olfactory Communication

Abstract

We might be tempted to lump olfaction, which is smell, with taste into the chemical sense because these two senses are closely linked. For instance, have you ever tried to taste food when you have a severe cold, which blocks the sense of smell (Brown 1973; Pough et al. 2002)? Moreover, both smell and taste involve the detection of dissolved molecules by specialized receptors, but each has a very different embryonic origin. Smell is a somatic sensory system, with sensing at a distance (a skunk smell; Yahner 2001), and the sensation of the smell is sent to the forebrain. In contrast, taste is a visceral sensory system, e.g., this sense deals with the direct contact of sensations that are sent initially to the hindbrain. In this chapter, I deal with smell, or olfaction. This communication channel has been studied mainly in mammals and insects, but it has been studied somewhat in other taxonomic groups.