Page 93 - The Miracles of Smell and Taste

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forming it only once.
In making this long and
wearying journey, the
salmon has no naviga-

tional aids such as map
or compass to help it
find its way. Even
though it has no train-
ing, it has no difficulty
in finding the mouth of
the river it swam down in
its youth, and from many riv-
er branches, unerringly selects the
one that will lead it back to where it was
born. The salmon achieves these seemingly impossible tasks because it
possesses a perfect scent perception system that functions as a directional
locater.
These abilities of salmon were first revealed by experiments carried

out in the 1970s. Allan Scholz of Eastern Washington University exposed
salmon to one of two odorant chemicals, then tagged the fish and released
them. Two years later, when the time came for these salmon to spawn, he
scented one of the nearby river branches with one of the scents and anoth-
er branch with the other scent. The salmon were observed to return to
whichever branch contained the scent they had been exposed to when
young. 77
The salmon possesses a dual-nostril nose. Water enters through one
nostril and exits through the other. These holes have been so designed as
to open and close in synchronization with the fish’s breathing. In this way,
the salmon can immediately analyze scent molecules dissolved in the wa-

Harun Yahya
(Adnan Oktar)