Skip to content
TrackPodcasts
scienceApr 3, 20262:01

Making Scents of Smells

About this episode

The human olfactory system uses 1,000 specialized genes to identify and distinguish up to 10,000 different scents. This highly specific and complex decoding process is evidence of an intelligent designer.

Image: Head Olfactory Nerve Labeled, Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator, CC BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons, background replaced.

For more creation resources, visit https://creationmoments.com/
Download the Creation Moments app at https://subsplash.com/creationmoments/app

Get every episode summarized

Each time Today's Creation Moment publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.

Email me new episodes

Free for 3 shows. No card needed.

Hosts & guests

Transcript ready

28 searchable segments. Every word is indexed and playable.

Making Scents of Smells

Today's Creation Moment

0:00
2:01

Full transcript

Today's Creation MomentMaking Scents of Smells. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.

How do we make sense from smells? Stay tuned for today's creation moment. And now here's our creation moment host, Ian Taylor. How many different sense do you think your nose is capable of smelling? The answer is about 10,000. Now we know that humans and mammals detect smells by using at least a thousand different genes. While these genes are found in every cell of your body, they are active only in your nose. This discovery says scientists give them their first insight into how smell works. Before this said one scientist, quote, we had almost no knowledge of the olfactory system and this really opens up the molecular study of smell in a very fascinating way. They say that each of the different genes seems designed to respond to a small group of odors. As each group of genes does its part, the entire system is able to recognize everything

we can smell. These genes pass signals from the nerve cells in the nose to a small region of the brain called the olfactory bulb. Now that smell genes are identified, researchers say that they can begin to understand how odors are detected and how the brain interprets those signals. Our sense of smell relies on a very elegant and sophisticated system. Imagine 1,000 genes lie at the heart of that system. Each one of those genes is information, a programmed code that is designed to make sense of what we smell. Information, programming and decoding are all terms that have assumed that we have a highly intelligent creator who designed our sense of smell. For a free copy of Ian Taylor's book, 25 Short Answers to Big Questions About Creation, visit us at creationmoments.com or call us toll-free at 1-800-42-Bible. That's 1-800-422-4253.

More episodes

More from Today's Creation Moment

View all episodes →