The War of the Noses

Those two separate nostrils aren’t just there so your nose can keep up aesthetically with your eyes and ears. According to a study from Rice University, the dual olfactory orifices–like most things–thrive on competition. When exposed separately to different odors, the nostrils do not smell a blend but rather an alternating sample of each individual aroma.

This “nostril rivalry,” as dubbed by the study published in Current Biology, is similar to what happens when the eyes are presented with different images, or the ears with different tones.

Dr. Wen Zhou and Dr. Denise Chen experimented with 12 people using two chemicals, one that has an odor like a marker pen, the other that smells like a rose. All 12 experienced switching between the two odors, with no pattern as to when and how often they switched.

Further exploration of the rivalry phenomenon will aid scientists in better understanding the sense of smell, according to Dr. Chen. “Human olfactory perception is very much a field that’s in its infancy. This opens a new area to study it.”