I had a hummingbird come check me out when I was in the garage and my neighbor speculated maybe it was due to my strong peppermint essential oil use... hmm. Well it probably was true!
Earlier studies were unable to demonstrate that hummingbirds showed a preference for the smell of flowers containing nectar. In addition, flowers pollinated by birds generally don’t have strong odors, unlike those pollinated by insects.
For these reasons, scientists did not previously believe the birds possessed the ability to smell things.
“This is pretty exciting, as it is the first clear demonstration of hummingbirds using their sense of smell alone to make foraging decisions and avoid contact with potentially dangerous insects at a flower or feeder,” said senior author Dr. Erin Wilson Rankin, a researcher in the Department of Entomology at the University of California, Riverside.
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/hummingbird-olfaction-10037.html
By studying bird DNA, however, researchers have now provided genetic evidence that many bird species have a well-developed sense of smell.
For example, in humans, which have a poor sense of smell compared with most other mammals, only about 40% of all OR genes may be functional. However, in the bird species studied by Steiger et al., the large majority of the OR genes were functional, again indicating that the sense of smell is much more important in birds than previously thought.
in fact olfactory bulb size had increased as birds diverged from dinosaurs, indicating that smell became more important, not less.
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