Abstract
Odors encountered during the daily activities of humans and animals, including those from flowers, sweat, excrement and cooking, are almost always complex arrays consisting of dozens, often hundreds, of odorous constituents. Rarely is an odor due to a single chemical. Nevertheless, despite their chemical complexity, commonly encountered odorants are usually identified within a second or two with the aid of a few sniffs. The sense of smell, therefore, can detect, analyze, discriminate and identify a complex odorant in a very short space of time, an action which as yet cannot be matched by any instrument.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Laing, D.G., Livermore, B.A. (1992). Perceptual Analysis of Complex Chemical Signals by Humans. In: Doty, R.L., Müller-Schwarze, D. (eds) Chemical Signals in Vertebrates 6. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9655-1_90
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9655-1_90
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