There is a naturally-occurring chemical called skatole. Its claim to fame is that it is named after, and smells like, fecal matter. It's "synthetic" but also "man-made" and there's a revolting ...

Newscripts’ Jan. 2 filing on ‘poop’ chemicals featuring four of the smelliest compounds known to the human nose—indole, p-cresol, dimethyl trisulfide, and butyric acid—brought back memories for two ...

Skatole is an infamously smelly molecule that, in some anaerobic bacteria, is synthesized from ʟ-tryptophan in a four-step process. Now, researchers have found that certain aerobic bacteria only need ...

Editor's note: This article was printed with the title, "O Mercaptan, My Mercaptan" in the May issue. Friday, February 25, 2011: A date which will live in odiferous infamy. At least at my house. All ...

Everyone’s breath has felt not-so-fresh now and again. If a person’s breath smells like mothballs, there’s most likely a medical cause behind it. Most causes of mothball breath are easy to diagnose ...

The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second. The speed of sound is 761.2 miles per hour. That takes care of vision and hearing, but what about our other senses? Shouldn’t there be a speed of smell?

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www ...

Maximilienne Toetie Allaart receives funding from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation. We’ve all been there: you try your best to keep it in, but you just can’t hold it anymore. You have to let it ...