How fruit flies sniff out their environments

Fruit flies—Drosophila melanogaster—have a complicated relationship with carbon dioxide. In some contexts, CO2 indicates the presence of tasty food sources as sugar-fermenting yeast in fruit produces the molecule as a ...

Researchers crack 30-year-old mystery of odor switching in worms

Soil-dwelling nematodes depend on their sophisticated sense of smell for survival, able to distinguish between more than a thousand different scents—but the molecular mechanism behind their olfaction has baffled scientists ...

Humans and other primates have evolved less sensitive noses

Variations in the genes for the newly discovered scent receptors for musk and underarm odor add to a growing body of research suggesting that humans' sense of smell is gradually becoming less sensitive. Sijia Wang of the ...

Hummingbirds can smell their way out of danger

In less time than it takes to read this sentence, hummingbirds can catch a whiff of potential trouble. That's the result of new UC Riverside research showing, contrary to popular belief, the tiny birds do have an active sense ...

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