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I think that's because you can usually smell when food is close to being rotten before you can see it...

EDIT: reading the WardsWiki reference from that Wikipedia page, there's also the point made by early users of the term that smells are something you have to check out, but don't always mean something needs fixing - e.g. a bad smell may be a gas leak, or it may just be a rubbish bin.

by blanched4 hours ago|

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Pairs nicely with the fact that smell is the sense most likely to be experienced differently between two people :)

by chowells1 hours ago|

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Is that actually true? Just because English treats scents as only describable by analogy doesnt mean all languages do. There are a number of languages with scent descriptions for aspects of a smell that are transferrable. [1] That suggests everyone is capable of decomposing a scent into components the same way.

If that's true, we're left with a question equivalent to "does everyone see the same red?". As far as I know, the pure version of that question cannot be answered because subjective experiences of sensation cannot be transferred. And at that point, I'd say the manner in which they're experienced differently is equivalent.

1. https://youtu.be/w3KswMaEBiI

by blanched1 hours ago|

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It’s not my area of expertise, but a friend in the field told me the fun fact originally.

Looking into it, it seems like smell has the most potential for genetic variance: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3990440/

That said, I can’t find any direct research comparing perceived senses. So they (and now I) might have oversimplified.

Thanks for the link, looks interesting!