Why You Can’t Smell Your Own Home

Have you ever come home after a long day, realized your house smells bad, but it goes away after a few minutes? Why can’t we smell our own home? Tara is here to explain a phenomenon known as “sensory adaptation.”

Read More:
Why Can’t You Smell Your Own Home?
“Everyone’s place has a smell. Some homes smell like fancy perfume or Anthropologie candles; others smell like cats.”

Watch More:
What Makes The Perfect Belly Button?

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[Peachsnowcone]

I want them to do one about "why do we look different in pictures than we do in a mirror"

[cubedude]

a similar effect with vision is that you ignore your nose almost all of the time.

[knuckles]

I figured this out when I was a toddler..

[munem]

Explains why people never notice if they smell bad

[thebiggamer]

This is also the reason some people can't smell their own bodily stench, right? How horrible.

[ilovethelegend]

"Why we can't smell our own home" "Because our brains are wired to begin to ignore constant stimuli after a little bit."
Slow news day?

[satay]

Tomorrow on DNews: "Breathing in and out is good for you" A study has been done.

[ravenlorans]

Is this why Women can't smell when they are wearing a Half a Bottle of Perfume when it's making the rest of us Gag when we are 4 blocks away Upwind? Or make us Gag when we are trying to eat but all we taste is the Bitch's Perfume?

[Longshore]

It works the same way with cologne. If you use the same fragrance everyday you can't notice it after awhile . The way to fix that is to stop using fragrance for a few days or rotate your collection

[DylansWaffles]

indian people's homes usually smell weird o_O

[ln]

my house smells good when i come back from vacation

[rdGenGuy]

I've been told my apartment smells like Bacon.
I can't smell it.

[kght]

i live next to a highway, you sorta tune it out even if you are talking to someone. people who live next to the highway with me don't talk any louder when we are near the highway or away from it, the noise of the cars is just filtered out in our heads so there is no reason to speak loud even though the highway once focused on is extremely loud. so yeah, happens with other senses too.

[Forflies]

I thought this was common knowledge :/

[Guineagirl]

I always have this, as I have a guinea pig. She has a large cage in my room, and even though it's well ventilated with a fan going on to circulate all day and the door open, most people feel like I should be able to smell something, yet I never smell a thing! My aunt does not like my piggy, so she always tells me it smells horrible and she never seems to get used to it - which fits well with this video (bad = not adapting). But my mom likes my guinea pig and she sometimes smells it, but it never really bothers her.

And then my mom hates farm smells, but I go horseback riding a lot and my dad grew up on one, so we never smell that either. Both my dad and I, have come to the point where we don't smell manure and dirt or whatever, so it never bothers us. The only thing I smell on my horse is a sweet hay smell which I actually like.

[javiersuarez]

Thank you Tara and Dnews team for this video and so many others that help me to understand more about science

[userjames]

Either Tara is following me around during the day and noticing what I notice, and then making a video in 5 minutes before I get to the computer, or she is psychic.

[Alchemydude]

You definitely have the same adaptive instincts with touch. When I started to wear contacts for a while, I'd still push on the bridge of my nose, or put my fingers the exact width of my frames where my frames are despite not actually wearing my glasses, but it still felt like they were slipping down or falling off.

[laughuntilidie]

Hold on a sec.
Sight works the same way. The most common things you can't see unless you're aware of them are your nose, glasses, and eye floaters.

[RossLlewallyn]

Sight does this at times. You get acclimated to dark and light situations. After spinning your brain makes you dizzy because it's still trying to cope with the motion. And tons of visual tricks are based on adjusting eyesight, then tricking it!