It turns out that cats have a much better sense of smell than we do, and not just because they have 40 times more odor sensors in their noses. It’s also about how air makes its way through the feline nose. Scientists have just figured out that when a cat breathes in, the air gets separated into two different flow streams.
Using a 3D model of the feline nose and simulated inhalation, they saw that one stream is cleansed and humidified as it spreads slowly along the roof of the mouth and makes its way to the lungs to deliver oxygen. The other air stream contains the odorant — the chemicals in the air that have a scent. That stream moves much more rapidly through a dedicated passage that takes it right to the olfactory region at the back of the nasal cavity. If the odorant had to go through the respiratory system first, a lot of the scent would be lost.
It’s nature’s version of a gas chromatograph — a laboratory tool that detects and separates chemicals in vaporized form. The alligator nose, which is quite long, has also been found to mimic gas chromatography. What’s amazing in cats is that it happens in such a relatively small space. Tightly coiled airway structures in the feline nose get the credit. Think of how a tightly coiled labyrinth that takes up relatively little area can actually have more space in it than one that is spread out without a lot of twists and turns.
The researchers who made the finding, at institutions that include The Ohio State University College of Medicine and the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, say the cat’s olfactory system is so sophisticated that it could help make improvements to gas chromatographs manufactured by people to improve such things as safety testing in car manufacturing.
