Wording is funky. To clarify:
The rain smell is due to a compound called geosmin. The bacteria that produces it is Streptomyces.
When I taught microbiology lab, I would grow a petri dish of Streptomyces during one particular class and have the students smell it
You mean… You can … Bottle up petrichore ??? How come is there no wide range of perfume/candle/lotion and whatnot?
Can I make it at home, if so, how would I go about it with everyday items? Can streptomyces cause health issues?
There absolutely are petrichor scented things
There’s like an indian family/company that’s been making some hiqh quality petrichor perfume for idk at least 100 years, probably several hundreds, if not a thousand or more idk.
I forget what it’s called you can probably look it up with perfume pertrichor india
edit it’s called “Mitti Attar”
They might’ve been making it for 10,000 years for all I know. I don’t know shit.
Yup. I have a shaving soap like that called “Summer Storm.”
https://maggardrazors.com/products/chiseled-face-summer-storm-artisan-shaving-soap-4oz
I’ve never smelled the stuff but apparently the smell of rain is something people try to bottle.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/smell-of-rain-kannauj-perfume-mitti-attar-india
That’s the romanticized, traditional Indian cowshit mix trying to approximate it. (Not doing a disparaging stereotype here, that’s just literally how the article says they make it.)
I’d be surprised if it actually contains the compound we’re talking about.
i Kind of doubt it. in a video i saw if the process they were using hardfired bricks. i don’t believe any organic compounds would survive the heat.
(dung might be a better term for what you were referring to. i seem to remember that because of the way they feed their cattle the dung has a very high fibre content which makes it a good source for building material. it’s nowhere as gross as the diarrhea like consistency we get from cows in Europe)
I have some of this. It smells pretty good
I’m nothing close to a chemist but I love watching chemistry videos.
Well the smell of rain is actually petrichor, it just has a combination of geosmin and ozone and other chemicals that make that smell.
Geosmin on its own is just a part of it.
Why would we need such a strong sensitivity to it?
We evolved in the Savannah.
Rain means the watering holes are filling up, which is obviously good cause we need water, but it also attracts prey animals.This, of course, was summarized most eloquently at the zenith of human evoloution: the 1982 hit single by Toto clearly stating, “I bless the rains down in Africa.”
Oh wow all this time I thought they missed the rains of Africa
“I guess the rain is down in Africa” for me.
Some of those rains went unblessed because someone missed them.
You think rain is your ally?
You merely adopted the damp. We Brits were born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see dry sand until I was already a man…
Heh. Molded.
Their spelling was moulded by the US
Run! He’s a mossman!
Was that area a desert 250,000 years ago?
The whole continent of Africa (as every other continent) went through several major climate changes, small and big. Pretty sure there were at least five major turnovers from wet to dry climate and back since then, and numerous before.
Fun fact, there are some theories that the Sahara desert was actually caused by over foraging from early goat herding.
So to a degree our ancestors may have already caused some climate change.
Your ape’s first anthropogenic climate disaster.
Republicans and climate science deniers’ favorite fun fact
Wait… What?
Like when they say “cLiMaTe ChAnGe Is NoThInG NeW” and try to tell you “the climate has been changing for thousands of years”
The North African region was a lush verdant region 11,000 years ago, which is not so long ago considering humans already spread far and wide around that time.
I’m still missing something here. For it to be useful, I’d imagine that it would need to inform decisions, and do so where existing senses would fail.
At least in my environment, if I can smell rain, I could also just as easily use my eyes to see the cumulonimbus clouds and say “rain, due east”.
In the savanna are there scenarios where the only awareness of rain would be smelling it? Can you derive directionality at 5 parts per trillion? Does it matter?
you can smell it coming before you see it imo. that gives you time to get to shelter and to move to where the water/food is
You’d think more African animals (especially predators) would have that ability, then
Water is life.
Moisture is the essence of wetness and wetness is the essence of beauty
so hot right now
Shrek is life.
Shark is wife.
Shrimp is rife.
Shrimp-fried rice.
Life is life.
Na, naaa, nanana.
Victory is life
It’s worth remembering that evolution doesn’t select for the best as much as it selects against the worst.
The reason we have such sensitivity doesn’t have to be particularly game changing as long as it doesn’t make us less likely to reproduce.
You can plainly see our big niche adaptations being used everyday. We think good. We recognize patterns. We use tools. We walk a lot, efficiently and upright. We communicate with high precision. We have a surprisingly efficient digestive system.
We’re not busting out the ability to smell rain super often, which hints that it might be more in the “doesn’t hurt” category instead of being a big advantage.
My guess is that being able to smell disturbed soil is helpful for tracking, either where an animal has run or where something has been buried. Our ancestors were not above digging up a fresh-ish dead animal a canine had buried for later.
But it could just be that rain sense slightly more accurate than looking towards the horizon was as useful then as it is now: vaguely, I guess? It just doesn’t hurt anything.Maybe an evolutionary trait to locate water?
And thirsty herbivores to eat!
Unlikey
my theory is natural selection of humans/human ancestor species. The ones who didn’t find shelter in time before a rain were more likely to die.
I think it’s more than those who couldn’t find water died, within 3 days.
Average human male dick length is 2.7cm erect.
Based on my study with a sample size of 1
Trying to get people jealous, are we?
Dann it, you succeeded
I lost my smell to COVID in that first year, before the vaccine. Recently and for the first time since, I smelled petrichor and I could have cried.
Hmm. Seems strangely on point that Ichor is the blood of the (greek) gods. (Petro- means stone, as in Petro-Oleum.)
Fee-fi-fo-fod
I smell the blood of a god
It’s also an off flavor that tasters train for in beer, from water inclusion. It’s not good for beer but I don’t mind the smell at all
Very beet-flavored to me
Funny you should call it beet-flavor. Geosmin is literally the reason why beets have that flavor :)
Yup! I know, I was an expert taster at a large brewery :)
It was fun! And a little bit ruined some beer for me.
I’m an enthusiastic amateur taster with a terrible palette and I bet it would ruin it for me, too.
Fitting username
At 45 i consider myself to have reached Pro-am status.
“Earthy” if you will.
Wayoooo
You train to taste beer?
Absolutely, if you’re serious about sensory science!
At the large craft brewery I worked in we trained on like… ~40 attributes? Weekly usually, with taste panel and impromptu trainings most every day.
You can study to become a beer judge, even just for fun: https://dev.bjcp.org/education-training/exam-preparation/beer-judge-training-study-program/
One of the parts of that is to get a kit that helps you recognize “off” flavors: https://www.bjcp.org/education-training/education-resources/sensory-kits/
I thought it was ozone.
It is also that.
Petrichor is the smell of rain and is a term like Channelle #5 where it’s a combination of ozone and geosmin and other compounds.
Ozone is the smell of an electrical fire
Or poliester fleece or blanket when you hear little sparks.
Some will remember playing with a CRT TV screen 👀I remember the feeling and the sound, but not scent.
Smells kinda dry and vaguely fishy/metallic. It’s very distinct, you know it when you smell it.
Should be noted however that it’s not very healthy to breathe it in and large and/or repeated exposures can cause respiratory damage. Some static electricity is probably fine but I don’t want to encourage someone to go out there and learn what it smells like first hand
Also welding. Also lasgun shots
When I first started learning how to weld, I always wore a respirator because a lot of the fumes can be dangerous. So anyway, we come back to the shop after our lunch break and my first thought was damn, what’s that smell?
Also lightning
Diff smell.
I call this ‘outside’ smell and you can smell it on a clear day.
There’s also fat volatiles in our skin that metals and sunlight degrade, so that outside smell could be the smell of you in the sun.
There’s a saying, someone smells like sun.
I find I smell it more often this time of year. I guess the heavier and colder air?
I love the smell of redistributed ood in the morning.
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“better then”
I’d like to see a shark write that more good.
I fricking love petrichor! Give me that god blood from stone sky daddy!
Smell of rain!? What…?
Not funny, but interesting!
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Wish we could be sensitive to H2S, would have saved a lot of lives.
EDIT: On second thought, no, fuck around pumping fossil fuels and find out.
Make every fart a million times worse.
