What the Nose Knows…

The nose knows how to sniff out criminals according to recent research. Each person has a unique body odor similar to the uniqueness of fingerprints. So when used in witness situations (lineups) smelling criminals odors helped people identify the bad guys 75% of the time, significantly better than the 45-60% for correctly (visually) identifying via lineup. The sense of smell has been proven to be a strong trigger for memories, more so than any other sense so it makes sense that associating odors with negative emotions could enhance the ability to identify the odor again. Dogs have long been accepted as nosewitnesses but this is a fairly new forensic possibility for human witnesses or victims, especially when crimes occur under visually obscure conditions.

In the study where researchers went out to prove what the nose knows, body odor samples were taken from the armpits of 20 participants. Then videos of violent crimes were shown to 40 students, each with a specific odor sample. Afterwards the students were given 5 samples to sniff and told to identify the one associated with the criminal. Although this experiment wasn't done in a real world situation the results (75% identification accuracy) were pretty significant. Now you know what the nose knows!