Have you noticed that after a while of being exposed to an obnoxious smell, you stop smelling how bad it is? The brain quickly adapts to the bad smell – in fact in as little as one minute. What happens is that there’s about a 50% adaptation of the olfactory receptors in the first second with the remaining receptors adapting much more slowly. That’s why scientists believe that there is a psychological component to smell adaptation although they aren’t sure where in the brain this occurs. Considering that the nose can detect minute quantities of methyl mercaptan in concentrations as low as 1/25,000,000,000 mg/milliliter of air, that’s a good thing we adapt so quickly. And what exactly does methyl mercaptan smell like? If you said rotten cabbage, bad breath or flattus you’d be right on all counts!

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