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Out of all of our senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, clairvoyance - which is the most under-appreciated? The answer, clearly, is smell. Now four researchers have taken it upon themselves to address this by creating an amazing 'smell map' of London. 'What the hell' is a 'smell map?' we hear you sniff. Well, let us tell you: it's a map of London's smells. Daniele Quercia, Luca Maria Aiello, Rossano Schifanella and Kate McLean compiled the map by scouring social media for smell-related words used about specific places in London. They matched each word to a colour using an 'aroma wheel' [above], then plotted the colours on to the streets of the capital. The resulting olfactory pictures beautifully map out all the odours that Londoners are smelling and talking about. Take a deep breath...
Animals
This map highlights all the bits of the city that smell like animals. So, obviously, London Zoo is pretty prominent up there by Regent's Park. But dots appear all over the city - maybe what they're smelling is party animals? We all get that pungent party musk.
Emissions
Here we see emissions mapped out across the city. By emissions, we mean traffic, not farts. Easy to confuse the two. But either way, this shows just how polluted central London is. We should all move to the Highlands, then we'd live a lot longer. No pop-up burger bars in the Highlands though.
Nature
London is one of the greenest cities in the world. Just look at all these nature smells. Ah, fresh cut grass, beautiful blossoming cherry trees, stagnant canal waters, rotting piles of old
leaves, and, you know, the odd corpse of a fox here and there. Oh nature, how you spoil us.
Love a good map? Check out these:
Is this unofficial tube map easier to understand than the original?