The odorous black house ant is pretty common in the US. The smell is pretty pronounced if you crush them - grad student I was doing field work under randomly shouted “come smell my finger!” and yeah - it’s very much like blue cheese.
Some comments are calling it a genetic quirk, but I submit to you all that it is the ones that lack the ability that have a deficiency.
Am I also deficient if I lack the ability to taste soap when I eat cilantro?
please eat all the cilantro so we never have to see it on a dish again
I’m one of the very rare people that have the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap, but likes it. I blame the soap flavoured gum I had as a kid here in Canada.
So maybe save a little soaplantro for those that want it ;)
cilantro tastes like soap for you ? no way, is this real ?
It’s pretty common. I mourn for those that aren’t freakish enough to actually want to eat soap. I mourn for those like the parent too, but for different reasons.
Yes because it makes you worse at finding and disposing of those damn stink bugs, whose stink smells vaguely like how soapy cilantro tastes because of aldehydes.
I have an anteater but I can’t smell the ants
You gotta show em who’s the real boss. Hold tight and jerk hard until successful complaince is observed
I can smell ant death pheromones. It smells like cleaner and artificial sweetener. A very unique smell but very pungent.
I can smell a single bedbug. That smell is terrifying
Yes, what do they smell like?
It’s a sour bitter smell. Hard to describe, but I know it when I smell it. I fled to the SW US to never smell them again
…what do they smell like?
It’s a sour bitter smell. I fled to the SW US so I never smell them again
Fuck I have the stupid shitty cilantro gene and there’s some dudes with ant hunting genes?
Not fair :(
I put soap and cilantro into stuff i make so no one feels superior
“Now it sucks for me and you! Just kidding, I like the taste of soap.”
I love cilantro, but if I put enough on a taco or something I can taste a little bit of soapiness. It isn’t bad enough to put me off of it, but I get it.
It’s funny. Cilantro tastes weird and I don’t like it, but I wouldn’t say it tastes soapy. That said, whenever I have it, I always notice this weird taste, but never actually recognize it. Then I check the ingredients and there it is.
Cilantro in salsa is so good. Something about how the flavor of the tomato acts with it… I need to make some salsa now.
I can smell ants. I’ve eaten one before. They taste like iron. Like blood mixed with pepper. Idk why I told you that just now.
you’re welcome to untell me
There’s no putting the ink back on the bottle.
Different ants taste different!
I’ve had ants that taste like fizzy lime…
The one I ate was one of those big black ones. Not the huge ones that wander around by themselves, but the normal colony black ants that are large enough to easily pick up.
They taste awful. Like licking a battery.
That’s a great explanation! Yes, that’s what they taste like.
Not something I ever wondered, but it’s a pretty neat anecdote.
I have the same thing. Maybe not quite that powerful, but as a kid I used to root out ant hills to shove sticks in and be a general terror. I thought it was normal until I started dating a girl and we went on a picnic and pointed them out saying we shouldn’t eat there. If I smash one it smells like someone opened a can of gas in the room.
You’re a genetic masterpiece.
Yes, I hope she realized that she should have a family with that guy. Those genes need preserving
And when did Charles Xavier reach out to you?
When I was 14, but I asked if he had a sister cause I’m into girls with shaved heads, and he just waved his hand and gave me ADHD and then walked away.
Forget Westchester - my boy Shino here has a whole clan, come to Konoha
https://youtu.be/ZHJG48NSWzg had to do it
If I touch an ant I can certainly smell it on my finger but I wouldn’t be able to detect an ant in the room with me
I can’t say I’ve ever gotten ant on my finger then proceeded to smell my finger.
When I was a kid it was a thing to stick a stick into a nest of ants so they’d piss on it so you could then suck/sniff the stick for a… sensation.
I never did as I didn’t want to bother the ants.
Chimp coded
I can’t do that, I think you have special ant powers
I can register formic acid if I touch an ant or am fairly close. Probably wouldn’t smell an ant from a distance, though
Like some kind of any man
There was a brief moment, while I was going through SERE training, in the Navy; it was before we were “captured” but long enough that I hadn’t eaten in a while. We were in the low mountains of SoCal, dry and hot. Whenever we would stop movement for a moment and take a seat, I could smell when an ant was on me.
I didn’t recognize what the smell was at first until I saw an ant, after smelling it. I hooked him on my finger and brought him close to my nose and it was clear, he was the source.
I couldn’t describe it very well though, not a common smell to me. Never experienced it since.
Maybe it was the combination of no food or bathing, and heightened stress. My SiL also went through SERE, says she has no idea what I was talking about, and just makes fun of me about it. But she’s also the type of person who would lie about it, just to fuck with me.
So who knows.
It’s a genetic quirk, entirely possible they don’t have it and you do. There’s definitely a thing with real hunger and increased senses too though. I experienced the same thing in Iraq when we out ran our supply lines and went on severe rationing.
You went through SERE training? Damn soldier, you’re harder than woodpecker lips! What was your MOS that required that training? I know someone who went through it and he said they locked him in a box that was too small to move in, and then played a recording of someone counting to 10 very slowly over and over again for hours. Did they do that to you?
I was a helicopter aircrewman. They sent all aircrew through.
I definitely wouldn’t consider myself “harder than a woodpecker by any stretch”, and yes, I got the box and there were several songs they would loop that were designed to prevent you from relaxing. The “Boots” song is one I probably won’t forget
The box actually didn’t bother me. But there were a lot of things that really messed with head. They were also still water boarding back then.
We still had SEALs going through the same school (they have their own now), and we had one that kept escaping. You couldn’t really escape though, because this was all training, so you if you did escape, you were supposed to stop and announce it, and let the guards come get you. And then you get punished. So it was stupid to escape. Except this fucking guy didn’t give a shit. He just kept escaping. The stripped him, hosed him down, slapped the shit out of him, he didn’t care. In the debrief, they said they almost failed him because they thought he wasn’t taking it seriously. I thought they weren’t taking it seriously if it was that easy to escape
That wasn’t something I ever want go through again.
Ha! That guy was a genuine badass, and they didn’t know how to deal with it.
I was a helicopter crewman too, but they never sent me through anything like that. I was Army though.
Is water boarding as bad as they say it is in the news?
Yeah it fucking sucked. I don’t necessarily disagree with how or why they did it though.
It taught you that no matter how tough you are, everyone breaks. Nobody made it through that scenario without saying whatever they told you to say. You are to resist as much as you can but it is not worth your life.
So as a tool to demonstrate that everyone has a breaking point, it was very effective. But as a method for actual intelligence gathering, torture has and always will be notoriously unreliable, and in my opinion, not worth the ethical sacrifice.
I thought the Army had their own version of SERE.
You’ll like this story. I was a helicopter crewman off the Kitty Hawk when 911 happened.
They kicked off most of the airwing. The kept a few of us helos, some hornets, and some S-3’s (for refueling).
Then we took on a bunch of Rangers and Delta, and turned us into an Army Carrier. Then straight to hanging out just barely in international waters outside of Iran/Pakistan.
It was 75% Chinooks and Blackhawks. No rotor brakes or folding rotor heads. No real carrier landing quals, and half the hand signal were different. But we made it work.
We had to give up our Ready Room and some other “primo” spaces to “Task Force Sword”, but post 9/11, there was zero inter service rivalry. It was all, “what does the mission require.” and “What do you need from us?”
Our Aircrew shop was next to the Ready Room and it only took a day for a couple of the operators to realize we had Unreal Tournament. So our shop became a common rest stop between missions.
Man that was a crazy deployment.
That sounds like a wild adventure!
I’m fully aware everyone can be broken. It has caused me a few hypothetical crises of conscience thinking about if there’s even any point to trying to resist.
The Army has their own SERE school, but my unit didn’t send me there. I spent my whole time in the Army at peace, so I was never deployed. I got a Desert Storm ribbon because we were technically still there, but not really. That was just a freebie for me.
I actually received activation for wartime duty orders because of 9/11, but I had ETS’ed the prior month. Their activation system wasn’t up-to-date with their ETS system, so they just called it a computer glitch and I didn’t deploy or anything. I was already honorably discharged anyways. I honestly thought about re-enlisting after that, because you know we were all pretty ready for some payback (whatever that meant back then), but I had a new baby, so I decided against it. My hearing was shit by then anyways, so I probably wouldn’t have made it past the MEPS.
Anyways, I had a good time in the Army, and enjoyed working on helicopters.
Gonna starve myself to see if I have the ant smelling superpower
Let me know how it goes. I honestly would love to know.
Maybe it was a particularly stinky ant
yeah a small % of folks can smell them.
Last time I was reading through comments from those who could, the common response was “sorta like raisins”
Spicy raisins
A little like cilantro
I’m one of the ones that dislike the smell of cilantro as it is repugnant. (to me)
Old cilantro that’s starting to go bad maybe. That has a very “earthy” smell similar to an over-watered plant
mom, my nuts?
I have it. My mom used to crush ants she saw in the kitchen before she realized that the stink I was complaining about was the stench of compressed ant corpses. Don’t get me started on these stinky fucks:
I’m so intrigued! What do centipedes smell like?
I think that’s a millipede. Centipedes = 1 pair of legs per body segment, millipedes = multiple pairs per body segment.
In the picture it looks like more than one pair of legs per body segment.
I think that’s how it is, anyway.
Milipedes.
The closest I can equate it to is hair chemicals.like the stuff they use for perms or coloring…but worse.
EDIT: Ants also have a strong chemical smell. Pungent like Krazy Glue but not at all the same.
I can smell millipedes up close but not far away. I also can’t smell ants
Omg, this is peak nerd.
If this is a thing it’s def a special subset of ant smellers that would go ant hunting (whatever quantity of ants).
They smell SO BAD. I was super sensitive to it as a kid, and the smell would be impossible to get off, so I developed a habit of never crushing them.
Why tf would anyone crush ants? Is this a thing?
Like, killing them? One or two running across a table, and you just pop em?
You murderer!
I hope the smell never washes off your hand, you sick son of a bitch.Look, if they wanna stay alive, they can take a shower.
Huh, oh yeah, like any invertebrate, bcs they are within human space which isn’t allowed.
Idk why my brainhole didn’t make the connection, I def know people that kill eg spiders if they see them.
I sometimes kill mosquitos that won’t leave via regular ventilation paths.
We like you too.
I leave the dead mosquitos outside as an offering for the local flying squids, much like ravens they are smart af, and a pleasant addition to the square concrete jungle we made for some reason.
Thank you, but we prefer mackerel.
Spider Bros can stay. Ants too stinky.
No, it’s ugly? I just swish them away.
Like spray them with water? Sure, if they’re in the sink or on the counter. If you mean just swat them away, I wouldn’t trust that to kill them. And as soon as it doesn’t kill them, and they find their way back to the nest, there’s a chance they’ll lead others back, if they found so much as a scrap of food.
As a tool-using species, killing them with something you won’t care about the smell being on seems pretty trivial.
It releases the smell. It stays around in the room.
I can’t smell ants but I can smell roaches. Any house or restaurant I walk into that has that signature roach scent, I do a 180° and leave.
As to describe the scent of roaches: Pungent, wet/moldy towel smell, worse when they’re dead.
We need people like you as health inspectors.
You know, I feel like I know that smell as well. Not anywhere NEAR as pungent as the ant smell, but I’ve been in some… Unfortunate situations with enough roaches that I can conjure up that smell.
Wait I thought wveryone can smell roaches
Well, now I can’t help but wonder if burning them is better or worse.
Probably better, I’ve never tried it. I just imagine a bunch of tiny fireballs running around.
In my experience it’s way better, and that having a candle burning will usually clear up the scent of a crush in relatively short order.
An anteater in a human suit
