Question
A. Smell and Tell
Have you ever been (1) about what life would be like if you couldn’t smell anything? Maybe you think, “That wouldn’t be so bad.” After all, you wouldn’t miss some (2), like the smell coming from the guy sitting next to you on the bus who hasn’t taken a bath in several weeks. But think about it again. All day, every day, our noses pass along information to us. We walk by the kitchen, pick up the smell of apple pie in the oven, and know that we will enjoy a tasty slice later on. Other smells that aren’t so nice, like those of spilled gasoline or burning wood, may protect us by warning of danger.
It is a (3) that smells make us remember the past. For instance, the smell of the outdoors after a rainstorm may remind us of an early-morning hike in the woods we took years ago. Scientists are not sure why smells remind us of the past, but they know it is so. Indeed, scientists (4) that smell may be the most powerful of all our senses.