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How many scents can people smell? Until now, scientists claimed that humans could distinguish only about 10,000 smells. It turns out, however, that the claim is no longer true.

Neurobiologist Leslie Vosshall and her team from Rockefeller University in New York released a new study about the human sense of smell. According to them, people can detect about one trillion scents! The research result proved a previous study, which put the capability of people’s noses below the senses of sight and hearing, wrong.

The researchers prepared 128 different odor molecules, which contained the scents of almost everything. They created unfamiliar smells by mixing the molecules randomly in groups of 10, 20, or 30. After selecting 26 participants, they gave each participant three samples - two containing the same odor, and one containing a different odor. The participants were asked to pick a different one out from the three samples.

There was a great deal of difference among the participants. On average, however, they could easily distinguish the odors containing more than 51 percent of the same components. Using the answers, the researchers came up with a theory that people can discriminate more than a trillion smells.

“People assume animals are much better smellers than people. Humans are remarkably good at smelling things,” Vosshall said.