Tikumu’s letter

Press, 2 January 1979, Page 6

Tikumu’s letter

Dear Children, Summer is a good time for smelling ail sorts of lovely things — dry grass, roses, lavender, seaweed, lupins on the sandhills, and the garden after rain. Stand outside and sniff — you will pick up other interesting scents. Many thousands of years ago, though, humans had a keener sense of smell. It was hard for primitive man to survive and he used his nose and other senses to detect danger. Nowadays, our sense of smell is less efficient but our eyes are better. Many animals, however, can sense smells lost to us. And often they depend on their noses. Think of the dog. His life is made up of hundreds of different smells and they tell him all he wants to know about the world around him. If he loses his master, he does not search for him with his eyes, hut puts his nose to the ground and tries to pick up his scent. Insects can also smell well. Male moths find the females by scenting them from quite long distances, and bees can smelt a stranger the moment it enters the hive. They sting

the poor intruder to death. And if the smell-organs are removed from ants, they start fighting one another and so prove that they recognise their friends by their scent. Even fish can smell. The water does not prevent them. A scallop has only to take a sniff and it knows that its hated enemy, the starfish, is about. It then swims rapidly in the opposite direction. Many mammals depend on their senses of smell and hearing for finding food and hunt mainly at dawn and dusk when these senses are more helpful than vision. Their sense of smell may also warn them of danger, so if you are interested in observing mammals in their natural surroundings, you must stand downwind. Otherwise the slightest breeze will carry your own smell to the mammal you are watching and it will run away. You may not be able to smell like an ant or a dog, but you will still find your nose a useful organ — and at mealtimes, who would like to be without it? Tikumu