Question. Some dogs can tell if a person has cancer, presumably by their smell. Does anyone think that some autistic people might be more sensitive to such changes in body chemistry? Not as much as a dog, but more than most other people? @actuallyautistic#ActuallyAutistic
@homelessjun@actuallyautistic Oh wow! I suspect that I’ve either learned to ignore some of this, or discount it, or assume, again, that it’s someone everyone does.
@Susan60@actuallyautistic yeah. and it's like when i was younger and mentioned that i could smell water and everyone is like, "no, you can't. water is odorless", even while saying that horses can smell water. that made me keep quiet about it and eventually sort of ignore it.
i suspect people can smell a lot that they are unaware of.
perhaps the awareness is what makes some people different.
@independentpen@homelessjun@actuallyautistic And I’ve just read this again after reading how someone can smell people’s farts (more often than most people). If only they smelled like snow.
@Susan60@independentpen@homelessjun@actuallyautistic
But I guess the smell of snow and rain is actually to really big extent the absent of other stuff. The air is highly purified and I guess the difference between snow and rain is the temperature and humidity level.
As an allergic person, the hours after a rain in spring and summer are so reliefing. Fresh, clean wonderful air without all that pollen.
@Susan60@independentpen@homelessjun@actuallyautistic
The day after it can have a peak here too I guess. But a strong rain after a pollen and dust loaded period is like the world took finally a shower. Plus in summer it if often connected to a drop in temperature.
And on top it's good for environment and water levels. I can't really unterstand how anybody can complain about rain.
@Dr_Obvious@independentpen@homelessjun@actuallyautistic My city is often derided for having 4 seasons in one day. It’s an overstatement, but we do have distinct seasons, & the temperature can drop by more than 20 deg Celsius in minutes when a cool change comes through in summer. I love it.
@Susan60@Dr_Obvious@independentpen@homelessjun@actuallyautistic Having lived on Melbourne for 11 years, I had adjusted to changeable weather. Coming to live in Perth again, I had to unlearn the habits, leaving umbrellas at home for months at a time, going out without a jacket!
@earthmothering9@Dr_Obvious@independentpen@homelessjun@actuallyautistic 😁I don’t like umbrellas, but raincoats make me too hot. I get into a habit of carrying one for a while, then get tired of it, then get caught out. And there’s been some summers where I’ve gone without a jacket for months, but they’re unusual.
@Susan60@actuallyautistic i remember one particular event: someone had lots of gas after eating a meal with garlic powder, because they loved garlic powder more than fresh garlic. every time they farted it smelled super horrible to me, like must stop breathing kind of horrible, but no one else seemed to even notice and i got more than a few weird looks.
@homelessjun@actuallyautistic We have pretty good tap water in my city, from a collection of clean catchments in forested areas. (Which we keep damaging. 😡)Most people never notice any differences, but I can when we’re in drought, or have had lots of rain etc. Taste & smell. It’s only subtle, but noticeable for me.
Having a cold I can't really say if I could smell our tap water. Never thought about that. I definitely taste water.
Once I was in #Manchester and I was shocked about their tap water. I couldn't dring it, because it was so strongly smelling like chlorine. Now I wonder, if people are not only used to it, but really can't smell it.
@Dr_Obvious@homelessjun@actuallyautistic Just tap water. I can’t necessarily smell it ordinarily, but can when levels are lower. And in towns with less clean water.
@calofost@Susan60@Dr_Obvious@homelessjun@actuallyautistic this thread amazes me. I've always considered smell a superpower anyway (I'm a congenital anosmic and as such was born without any smell at all. 53 years later I've still no smell and no frame of reference to understand it) but this thread has left me dumbfounded. You're all amazing!!
Seems perhaps I'm "lucky" in some aspect as I'm already overwhelmed with light,touch/temperature and sound without adding smell into the mix.
@petelittle1970@calofost@Dr_Obvious@homelessjun@actuallyautistic
Do you have a sense of taste? I love some smells, but I guess you don’t miss what you haven’t had. Even though I seem to have sensitive senses, I love “big” stimuli, except loud & jangling music or other sounds. I can appreciate subtle flavours, scents etc, but prefer big ones. Not sure if that’s an ADHD thing?
What I lack is the extra olfactory components. So all wine tastes bitter from the tannins. All coffee (instant or most expensive artisan brew) tastes the same.
I rely a lot on strong tastes (Sweet, salt etc) and texture differences
@Dr_Obvious@Susan60@actuallyautistic di, upw, distilled all have a distinct scent. distilled and upw have an additional sharp, somewhat acidic scent to me.
wonder if manchester people are accustomed to their water smelling like a swimming pool. 🙃
The theory that I subscribe to is that we don't necessarily have super noses, but rather we have much lower sensory thresholds for perception. So it comes down to whether dogs have olfactory receptors that humans do not. Anecdotally, when my estrogen is high my sense of scent is like the difference between a black & white photo and a full color hologram.
@Susan60@actuallyautistic I think our super senses are pretty much a given, every autistically coded, eccentric detective. The scientist lost in dust motes in sunlight.
I for one can smell certain medications, in my pee, once they've been processed.
Oh, no! Not at all! I'm a heavy coffee drinker, so I celebrate multiple times a day. 😂
I just had to fight back the mental image of someone showing an unflushed toilet to someone else: "Come, come! Take a good sniff! Can you smell it? No!? It smells like spironolactone, that's for my blood pressure."
I'm sorry. I sometimes have an overactive brain that likes to go places...
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