Pigeons may not instill fear like a Tyrannosaurus rex, but they inherited their sense of smell from the likes of these prehistoric killers.
Birds are known more for their flying abilities and their keen vision and balance than for their sense of smell, which researchers thought declined during their transition from dinosaurs. Vision and balance were thought to have improved for flight.
But new research published today by scientists suggests that millions of years ago, birds also had a better sense of smell than their dinosaur ancestors.
"Surprisingly, our research shows that the sense of smell actually improved during the dinosaur-bird transition, just like vision and balance,” says Dr. Darla Zelenitsky, Assistant Professor of Paleontology in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary and lead researcher.
The research team used state-of-the-art CT scan technology to examine the skulls of dinosaurs and extinct birds to determine the size of the creatures' olfactory bulbs, a part of the brain involved in the sense of smell. Among modern-day birds and mammals, larger bulbs correspond to a heightened sense of smell.
Of course the actual brain tissue is long gone from the fossil skulls but they used scans to visualize the cavity that the brain once occupied and then generate 3D computer renderings of the olfactory bulbs and other brain parts. If you have seen Angela Montenegro operate on Bones, you have an idea of what is involved in this cutting-edge science.
The notion that birds have a poor sense of smell may have been influenced by the birds we are most familiar with. The study found that some modern-day birds, such as ducks and flamingos, have pretty large olfactory bulbs while the birds with the smallest olfactory bulbs are the ones we see every day—the perching birds (crows, finches)— at our feeders and the parrots in our bird cages. It may be no coincidence that the latter are also the cleverest birds, suggesting that enhanced smarts may decrease the need for a powerful sniffer.
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