Read more about the chemistry of mercaptan, the world's smelliest substance, on the American Council of Science and Health website.
Ethyl Mercaptan (ethanethiol)
It also naturally occurs in petroleum and smells so much like death that some oil companies use vultures to pinpoint gas leaks. What is this? It even has a claim to fame, being ranked as the Guinness Book of World Records' “smelliest substance”.
So the award for the smelliest planet goes to Uranus. Kind of fitting, if you ask us. Jokes aside, it was recently found out that the atmosphere of Uranus holds large amounts of hydrogen sulfide, a gas that has a distinct, awful smell.
Lesser Anteater
The Lesser Anteater is regarded as one of the most foul-smelling creatures in the animal kingdom. Their pungent odour is about 4 to 7 times stronger than that of the skunk. It is possible to smell the lesser anteater up to 50 metres away!
Vanilla may be the world's most popular scent, but you'll find these five scent categories anywhere you run off to.
As a general rule, cats are sensitive when it comes to smells, but there are a few scents they hate that might just surprise you. They can't stand citrus and as much as you might love the smell of fresh herbs, cats hate rosemary and thyme. Banana and mustard are a big no-no too, as well as lavender and eucalyptus.
Surströmming (say "soor-stroh-ming") is tinned fish from Sweden. It is fermented (put in a salty brine for two months) before the tins are sealed up and sold. The process of fermenting the fish creates a strong rotten egg smell.
Surströmming is an infamous Swedish delicacy made of fermented Baltic sea herring. In spring, the spawning fish are caught between Sweden and Finland, then the heads are removed and the bodies are stored in a series of salted water solutions.
Introduction. When animals die they release an unpleasant smell. A pungent component of this scent is emitted by putrescine, a volatile diamine that results from the breakdown of fatty acids in the putrefying tissue of dead bodies (Hussain et al., 2013).
However, some people experience a change to their sense of smell about three to four months following infection. People report certain things—like food or body odor—smelling like garbage, rotten eggs, or chemicals. This altered sense of smell is called parosmia.
The Gastro-intestinal tract, from mouth to anus, often smells bad.
“The Durian Fruit”, fruit which is King Of fruits after having a strong smell and banned in many countries. In spite of all this still, it is one of the infamous and healthy fruit.
The rotten Greenland shark meat—which has been fermented and buried in a sand pit for up to five months before being hung to dry for another few months—emits an overwhelming scent of ammonia.
In April 2006, several major airlines (such as Air France, British Airways, Finnair, and KLM) banned the fish, claiming that the pressurised cans of fish are potentially explosive. The sale of the fish was subsequently discontinued in Stockholm's international airport.
Eating surströmming is a tradition and a social activity. Enthusiasts describe the taste as rich umami. It's also an excuse to throw a fermented herring party, called 'surströmmingsskiva'.
The strömming used for surströmming are caught just prior to spawning and the fermentation starts from a lactic acid enzyme in the spine of the fish which releases pungent smelling acids as well as hydrogen sulphide! Despite this many Swedes still love surströmming!
Citrus scents top the list of smells your dog probably hates. The scent of lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits is strong and unpleasant for your dog. For this reason, you can use citrus scents as a dog repellant in off-limits parts of the house. Their noses are irritated by the strength of citrus.
The mystery of why cats hate cucumbers is normally explained by the natural fear cats have towards snakes. To a feline's eyes a cucumber can look similar enough to the pesky reptile to elicit their fear response and make them jump a few feet in the air to avoid being bitten.
Vanilla seems to have the most pleasing scent in the world, according to the new study.
A study conducted by researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University of Oxford has found that vanilla is the world's most universally-loved scent.
Ackee fruit
When it's unripe, however, ackee contains high levels of the toxin hypoglycin A, which disrupts blood glucose production and increases the risk of hypoglycemia. Left unchecked, hypoglycemia can lead to coma and even death. Thus, the importation of the raw fruit has been banned by the FDA since 1973.