Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   Why is it that when a dead animal rots, it's one of the strongest and
> > worst smells in existence (so bad that it even sticks to any surfaces
> > nearby and is extremely hard to get rid of), but when a dead tree rots,
> > the smell is not bad at all (in fact, it could even be considered pleasant)
> > and doesn't stick so much?

> My guess is that you're asking why a dung-beetle isn't repelled by dung.

> I'd guess people who hung around dead bodies wound up getting sick, and the 
> farther away you stayed the better off you are.  You can't catch very much 
> from dead trees, and you generally don't try to eat trees anyway. Hence, the 
> idea that the scent is unpleasant got selected by evolution.

  I'm not so convinced that the answer is simply "we evolved to perceive
the smell of rotting flesh as unpleasant but not the smell of rotting wood".
I think that rotting meat has a much more potent odor even when measured
in a completely neutral absolute scale compared to the odor of rotting wood.
I really think there's an absolute difference in composition and severeness
of the smell, and it's not just a question of subjective perception. (Well,
unless I see some actual references of measurements that show that the amount
of smell is about the same in an absolute scale in both cases.)

  I'm just wondering why that is. Naturally the composition of wood is quite
different from the composition of meat, but both are organic living material.
Why is their rotting process so different?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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