Page 59 - The Miracles of Smell and Taste

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ings but brown in dogs. The color element is thought to influence scent
detection capacity, although the link between them is not understood. 49
Every new piece of scientific research lets us become better acquaint-
ed with the marvels of creation. Maybe as-yet-unknown perfect systems

in our noses will be brought to light. These will be a new means of giving
thanks in the manner that we should to God, the Lord of boundless affec-
tion and compassion Who created them.

Adaptation Mechanisms
As you sit reading these lines, you have practically no awareness of the
presence of the clothes you wear, despite their close contact with your skin.
You feel clothes when you first put them on, but that feeling soon
disappears, because receptors in your skin stop sending messages to the

brain. Were it not for this marvelous system, everyday actions such as
wearing clothes would become intolerable. You would also be unable to
perceive other signals because your clothes distracted you, and your life
would become very difficult indeed.
A similar process applies with the sense of smell. When you enter a
restaurant, you immediately perceive the cooking aromas. A short while
later, however, you become unaware of them. Yet there has been no reduc-
tion in the level of those heavy smells. You have simply grown accus-
tomed to them. A special mechanism known as adaptation causes this
change in sensitivity, although the aroma itself does not change in the
least.
To grasp the importance of this mechanism, consider the cooks who
work in a restaurant kitchen full of dense odors. If their sensitivity to the
ambient smells did not decrease, their situation would be exceedingly un-
comfortable. And their scent receptors, kept constantly busy, might be un-
able to detect any dangers—a gas leak, for example.

Harun Yahya
(Adnan Oktar)