As someone who suffers from anosmia, either congenital or acquired by an illness as a newborn, this really intrigues me. The fact that people can smell really confuses me.

i love the narrator. She has a sweet voice.

I am so glad she took the time to explain anosmia. I was born with it, and it’s something that many people don’t know exists, or refuse to believe it exists.

I've olfactomania, I'm obsessed with smells. I recognize someone by how they smell long before I know what there name is even what they look like.

Love this video! I'm obsessed with smell because I was born with out it...thank you for making me understand it better than before :)

I knew it would take a whole bottle of wine to find the best video on the internet.

It's so weird and amazing at the same time that our brains can transform electrical pulses into what we know as psychological "senses"

Damn when she sed take a deep breath i did and i forgot i was in the toilet

Hi Ted-Ed! If possible, I would love a detailed video about our response to smells (just like how we get the urge to vomit when we smell something so bad like surströmming). The history, the biology, everything that will explain it will be great. Thanks! I really love your videos though I watch on Facebook more than here.

SUper interesting. I knew that people have different sensitivity to smells. Didn't know there was scientific terminology for it =)

I recently had quite a bad cold and for about 2 weeks I couldn't smell anything which was very strange. As stated, food didn't actually have as much taste as normal, and fizzy drinks just had a fizzy texture with no taste :)

I'm glad you mentioned people who can't smell, I was born without it and stuff tastes dry, I often NEED some sort of added flavour in large doses to even enjoy some foods

I just suddenly had this question, so I wanted to find an explanation. I actually searched a different channel name, but Kurzgesagt didn't have a video on this topic. Happy that TED-Ed does.

The end where she says "be a little more thankful that you can" hits a lot differently after COVID

thank you this explained your sense of smell so well and helps me a lot with my research thank u

Supreme animation and explanation. Keep it up!

I'm not as thankful when somebody farts.

randomly came to watch this because i realized i didn’t know how smell worked - amazingly made video.

Great video! I just wish you mentioned the vibrational state of the molecule that is being sniffed dictates how the receptor is activated. This is one of the major reasons esters smell so different from alcohols.

Oh, I thought this video was about how we smell but it's about how we smell things.

This video was marvellous, also fun the animation. I loved the Ufo-Neuron!

had to watch this for an assignment, thats when you know its good info

This really helps me for my project.

I've lived with anosmia for years since I had brain surgery as a kid. Really makes me wonder if the receptors in my nose are still being replaced/if my body still has the capacity to synthesize new ones. Video really makes me wish I smelled more things when I was younger haha

Thank you for putting multiple language options for the captions :)

Really good short video that explains the sense of smell.

this vid was in 2013 and it said that scientists don't know why our olfactory epithelium is pigmented, so did they find out the reason, now in 2019?

Thank you for uploading!

After watching this, i feel like a dog.

I love the graphics!

Tan simpatica ella! ojala todas las clases fueran tan entretenidas. cool girl!

I love these Ted animations.

In a twist of fate, a system error directed the transaction to an invalid email address.

I love the bizarre animation. Where did the term "olfactory" come from? Maybe a scientist a long time ago named it that after he smelled the stink from an old abandoned factory. Maybe a paper factory, which uses some sort of detergent that has a horrible, sickly smell that drove me crazy in the 1960's when my family went camping in Georgia for two weeks. There were a lot of those factories in the area.

I've had no sense of smell or taste for three days now, and i've realised just how important they are. I can't smell anything at all, can't even taste my morning cup of tea. It's very bizarre, I feel bad for people that have had to suffer for years!

I've never heard of savory either and wonder if savory = umami too. But wonderful animation and for someone aspiring to be a neuroscientist, I loved the little-known facts and concepts.

I can't smell a lot of things. But I can still smell stuff. I have a super complicated nose.

Yeah poor me because of my many allergies my sense of smell has degraded a lot but food still tastes good so yeah

Well no wonder a lot of us couldn't taste anything when we lost our sense of smell during covid. And I'm highly sensitive to smell as well, it's a nightmare when I smell cigarettes or strong perfumes😣

I love these video series.

Excellent video!

way of presentation is nice.

My sense of smell is several times stronger than most people. It's been a curse my whole life. It's so strong I can smell a scent on just about everyone. There have been people who's natural scent made me sick. Every building I go into has a smell. The smell of food lingering in a building bothers me. So do people that have been sweating or just smoked a cigarette.

correction; olfactory neurons aren't the only ones that go through neurogenesis on a regular basis, gustatory neurons as well

Wonderfully made!!!

Well explained!!!

i get it but how do molecules chain through the air? i mean i can understand the energy of heat dispersing said molecules from bacon in a pan... but how the hell does perfume disperse itself through the air once it's on the body? i mean you would think that after you move away from the application site, the perfume itself doesn't have any energy to shed or propel molecules, yet if someone is walking down a sidewalk 3 hours after they've applied perfume, i can still smell it... how the hell does that work? is there just THAT many molecules left over after 3 hours that they're still being shed into the air?

This is actually really cool I am watching this for my school but this is interesting

I like this one. Thank you.

Thank you for a great video!) But I have a question: how hormones could be felt by animals? For example, how dogs can smell the noradrenaline hormone in a big distance? The hormones can be released through skin and reached the nose of dogs in the form of molecules??

Hey there. A few references could be useful, for instance how do you know that molecules actually bind selectively to receptors in the olfaction process? I've never seen a trace of evidence for that ^^

Oh anatomy ❤️ great video

These videos make me happy

who else is here cuz A. quarantine B. they, in fact, cannot smell

How do molecules that bring odor detach from olfactory receptor? I mean when molecule binds to receptor and activates olfactory neuron, how does it detaches after? Or does it just sit there?

i had temporary anosmia when i had covid, fortunatly it returned fully within a week - but i couldn't taste more than sweet - sour - bitter - salty - savoury for a week. my sister's sense of smell never fully recovered, and she can't taste or smell citrus properly...

If it wasn't for the hot fresh smell of salty buttery popcorn that permeates every Cinema entry way I think they would sell a lot fewer snack at the bar. Popcorn doesn't taste nearly as good as it smells, I fall for it every time xD

I heard T-rex had two noses essentially, and they could triangulate their prey by calculating the different times at which the scent hit each nose. Like smelling in stereo, or with depth.

My online class tr let me watch this and it really interesting and the narrator it really smart

Her voice looks exactly as sweet as the character 😊

After a REALLY bad concussion several years ago, i lost most of my ability to smell. There are a handful of things i can still smell (rubbing alcohol, lavender, oranges, blood) But that's it

Great video, how on Earth does smell evolve before the other senses?

Thank you for awesome content!!!

Amazing... explains a lot too..

This is a great video!

That explain why I always breath out while chewing when eating delicious food... to savor it.

I always knew that smell and taste went together in some way I always pinch my nose when I have to eat something I don't like it works every time😉

Every time when teded talk about our senses. TED-Ed : You people better get thankful

wow , wrote the lesson and narrated , good job Rose Eveleth :)

2:52 R.I.P. Piggy

7 year old knowledge is still fresh and uptodate

Please tell me this is a full series on all our senses (all 9 of them, or however many).

Very helpful video! Thanks!

Sweet voice

I love my olfactory epithelium when I'm not sitting next to a public bathroom.

Smell, the most underrated sense.

This animation is awesome, my favorite type of presentation.

Now I know what my not smelling anything is called thanks! :)

I'm thankful that I can smell... *sniffs deep into my doritos bag

very interesting thank you

amazing video!

nice video but there is a mistake , actually olfactory nerve fibers project directly to the cortex without relay on thalamus as they mentioned in the video

Correction suggestion: At 1'53" the mandarin(Taiwan) translation means tonsils(扁桃腺) which should be amygdala(杏仁體) instead.

nice and informative video please keep going. Good Luck

Nice video, but you could slow down a bit; a semester of public speaking at SCF hammered into me the importance of speaking slowly enough to be understood, especially since I naturally tend to speak too fast myself.

Can somebody clarify for me why the video mentions that smell goes to the thalamus but then it states that smell does not go through the relay center like all the other senses. The thalamus is the relay center, isn't it?

I lost my sense of smell after a hit&run accident. The taste thing is oh so true but you get used to it now i can eat things i used to hate but cant taste things i used to love. Miss smelling people too, this all happened while i was dating my ex and i became very disconnected after i lost my smell, still am to everybody

Thank you

How can we convert odor into a frequency that the sensors able to read?

I'm anosmic, the part about only tasting the basic sweet, sour, etc is true (for ex, I usually can't tell the difference between chicken, beef, oriental, etc ramen, and if I somehow did notice I wouldn't be able to pinpoint what the taste was, just that it was "different"). We do often have a heightened sensitivity to the texture of food though. People ask me all the time if I can taste, the answer is yes, it's just a different way of tasting. The concept of smell is weird, my family has tried explaining it to me with little luck (I was seriously floored when my sister said one time that apples smelled.....). The only thing my nose "smells" is fumes (like with really strong paint or rubbing alcohol), which really aren't smells at all. It's more like a physical presence punching the inside of my nose...... Sometimes it's nice, like when on a car ride we pass by a cow farm and the manure smell is bad, but it's more inconvenient than not. Everyone raves about fresh bread and chocolate chip cookies, I wish I could smell those, and I also worry about things like not smelling the gas if the gas stove is leaking. Appreciate your fully functional nose people, not all of us have one. :/

THANKS ALOT

Can smell be transferred from one place to another like phone call such as how do ants know where sweat is?

It's that terrible moment when you pee in the shower and the warm air brings the smell right into your nose.

Love your videos

Great video

I love this

Great olfactory clinic:)

I got sick a few months ago and after I got better it still literally took me about a month to be able to smell anything again. It was awful!!! I couldn't taste anything and I swear I think it impaired my hearing too.

This is good for my homework

I've got anosmia. Can't smell anything since birth. I actually just noticed the taste thing about a year ago. I go by texture of food instead of taste.