10 unnecessary ridiculous facts about your nose

Whether you have a small or a large one, a wide or a narrow one, a button nose or a hooked nose: we should be grateful for that nose of ours. The nose is our most direct sense: emotional, intuitive, and incredibly powerful. Did you know this already?

1. A human can distinguish up to 1 billion (!) different scents.

2. That we smell much worse than our dog or cat is bullshit. Dogs can better distinguish between the urine of other dogs, but humans are better at distinguishing subtle aromas in wine, for example. Ha. I know what I want to be better at.

3. Does a big nose smell better than a small one? No, the size of your nose does not determine how well you can smell at all. Women generally smell better than men, but have a smaller nose. And small children's noses smell better than large adult noses.

4. Of all the senses, smell is the best at evoking memories. This is because our smell center is located close to the hippocampus, the part of our brain that stores and retrieves memories.

5. In love with the scent of your loved one? Not so strange. The more you read about it, the more you realize that you are unconsciously ‘lured’ by someone's body odor. We can determine whether someone is a match for us based on their scent. Apparently, we choose different DNA in our partners so that when you cross your DNA with theirs, you exclude as many diseases as possible later in your children. Really handy evolutionary thing.

6. Did you know that the shape of our nose is related to the climate we live in? People with wider noses are more common in warm, humid climates. People in areas with a cold and dry climate often have a narrow nose.

7. Yikes. Someone with rhinotillexomania can't help but continuously. Unceasingly. Obsessively. pick their nose.

8. Did you know what snorting cocaine can do to your nose? The coke constricts the blood vessels and not enough blood reaches the nasal mucosa. It becomes inflamed and produces extra mucus. The result is a runny nose that is colloquially referred to as Colombian cold. Creative name indeed.

9. You produce about a liter of snot every day. The mucous membranes in your nose are real snot factories: they produce about a liter of the stuff every day. Yuck.

10. Tutankhamun reportedly had a personal... nose picker. The Egyptian pharaoh is said to have had someone in his service who would pick his nose every day. For this presumably most worthless job of all time, the chief nose picker received three pieces of cattle and food and lodging.