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)
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?
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.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.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!
You’d think more African animals (especially predators) would have that ability, then
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.
Was that area a desert 250,000 years ago?
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.
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.
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.
Maybe an evolutionary trait to locate water?
And thirsty herbivores to eat!
Water is life.
Shrek is life.
Shark is wife.
Shrimp is rife.
Life is life.
Na, naaa, nanana.
Average human male dick length is 2.7cm erect.
Based on my study with a sample size of 1
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.
