I guess pretty much the title. Does bad smells trigger some kind of different olfactory receptors than good smells, or is it really just our brains with “personal preferences”?
In: Biology
Bad smells are very often tied to things that could be harmful to our health, such as bacteria or mold. These are things that could have killed ancient ancestors. The ones who found these smells bad and avoided them were more likely to pass on their genetics, and thus, their children found these smells to be bad as well, and so on.
There’s a lot of subjectivity to it since our own individual experiences are tied to smell (our amygdala is a big part of what perceives smell), but one factor is often larger molecules smell worse. There’s a big thread on a [similar eli5 post](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/s/Y852rRKvJi) that might be useful.
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