Hunter-gatherer lifestyle could help explain superior ability to ID smells
Foraging communities in forests of the Malay Peninsula are better at identifying odors than their rice-farming neighbors
By Bruce Bower
Smell has a reputation as a second-rate human sense. But that assumption stinks once hunter-gatherers enter the picture.
Semaq Beri hunter-gatherers, who live in tropical forests on the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia, name various odors as easily as they name colors, say psycholinguist Asifa Majid and linguist Nicole Kruspe. Yet Semelai rice farmers, who live in forest outposts near the Semaq Beri and speak a closely related language, find odors much more difficult to name than colors, the researchers report online January 18 in Current Biology.