Do birds have a sense of smell?
It's a relatively weak sense of smell for most (with exceptions for birds such as turkey vultures that can smell carrion for miles), but yes.
For many birds though, it's nowhere as good as their hearing or eyesight.
Re:A girl who gets gifts from birds
by pavel_lishin on Thursday February 26, 2015 @01:59PM
(#9114473)
Apparently, yes: http://www.audubon.org/news/do-birds-have-sense-smell
Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly.
Can you do that?
Most people never try. Feynman found he could, to some extend.
https://books.google.de/books?id=Z7g-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=P...
Re:A girl who gets gifts from birds
by lotsofmangos on Thursday February 26, 2015 @01:29PM
(#9114183)
That story makes me suspect that Feynman was also a genius at flirting.
Re:A girl who gets gifts from birds
by dragonwriter on Thursday February 26, 2015 @01:04PM
(#9114002)
> Can you do that?
Maybe not, but then, humans have a pretty poor sense of smell compared to lots of other animals.
Re:A girl who gets gifts from birds
by pavel_lishin on Thursday February 26, 2015 @01:40PM
(#9114290)
I can't, but I have no idea what that's supposed to prove. That animals have abilities I don't? I can't fly, either, or swim in the arctic ocean and catch fish with my mouth.
I think the article (and probably the podcast? haven't listened yet) make too big a deal of this. We don't know that the crows realized that the lens cap belonged to those people. Perhaps they just saw it as another neat thing to gift. Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly.