Do men and women have different senses?

[LW]

Me and my girlfriend visited the local zoo yesterday. One interesting incident happened when we towards takin (http://www.pbs.org/edens/bhutan/a_takin.htm) enclosure.

I could smell the creatures even before I saw them, we were still about 20m away from them and they were covered behind some snow-covered trees. I immediately recognized by the smell that we were approaching some large herbivores that live in cold areas, they all smell the same to my nose (musk ox, visent and deer being the other same-smelling animals I noticed during the visit).

However, my girlfriend didn't smell them. She didn't smell them even when we were standing five meters away from them watching them browse some cut fir trees. At this point she said that she could smell the firs. I was very astounded because my sense of smell was overwhelmed by the beasts. I couldn't catch the smell of firs in my nose even after I tried to do so.

So, my question is, has there been any studies on differences on how men and women sense things? It seems possible to me that different gender roles in the prehistory may have caused differences in senses but it is also possible that I just am for some unrelated reason more sensitive to animal smells than my girlfriend.

[jj]

I'm not sure if this is a man/woman thing, but in fact smell is the least constant of the major senses.

While the characteristics of sight, hearing, and taste are quite constant, different people have different smell receptors. Someone here mentioned the largish number that have been discovered already.

Not everyone has the same set, so what you describe would seem quite possible.

Perhaps somebody here knows if there is a split between the sexes here.

[wayrad]

Like, "Man go out and hunt big game, woman tend garden and gather plant material"? (Just kidding :D)


Was she wearing perfume? Seems like that could be a factor.

edited to add: And does she smoke?

[BTox]

Some people are anosmic to specific odor causing compounds. When I was working in the field (chemical senses basic research) I remember being tested for and being anosmic to a steroidal musk-like odor.

[wildflower1]

Purely anecdotal - My late husband always noticed odors/fragrances/smells at least a couple of minutes before I did. Haven't seen any research or rationales suggesting that this is a consistently observed sex-linked trait.

[epepke]

Originally posted by LW
So, my question is, has there been any studies on differences on how men and women sense things? It seems possible to me that different gender roles in the prehistory may have caused differences in senses but it is also possible that I just am for some unrelated reason more sensitive to animal smells than my girlfriend.

I don't know about smell, but there has been some good research about sex differences in vision, and they do exist. Lack of stereopsis affects about 10% of men but only 1% of women. Similarly color-blindness. There's also some evidence that women are more likely to be able to see further into the ultraviolet than men.

[LW]

Originally posted by wayrad

Was she wearing perfume? Seems like that could be a factor. And does she smoke?

Nope, and nope. We have noticed earlier that I have slightly better sense of smell than she has (in that I can notice smells before her), but what really surprised me was that she could get the fir smell that I couldn't.

There is one smell that I'm very attuned to. It is the smell that some poplar trees make in summer. I believe this is because the house where I lived my first four years was beside a poplar grove. There are a few poplars along the route that I used to ride with a bike and it took me several years to realize what that familiar smell was.

[BillyJoe]

One of Hannibal Lector's fellow inmates had a particularly well developed sense. :cool:

[BillyJoe]

epepke,

Originally posted by epepke
Lack of stereopsis affects about 10% of men but only 1% of women. Do you mean that 10% of males do not have 3D vision?
Do these males have normal eyes? (3D vision being a brain function)

BillyJoe

[epepke]

Originally posted by BillyJoe
epepke,

Do you mean that 10% of males do not have 3D vision?
Do these males have normal eyes? (3D vision being a brain function)

The answers are yes (sort of) and yes.

Stereopsis is actually a relatively minor aspect of generating a 3D picture of the world from images. A few years ago there was a paper presented at SIGGRAPH comparing various visual cues in a virtual environment. Stereopsis was below shadows and foreshortening in terms of cues that were most valuable to the majority of people.

[BillyJoe]

Originally posted by epepke
Stereopsis is actually a relatively minor aspect of generating a 3D picture of the world from images. A few years ago there was a paper presented at SIGGRAPH comparing various visual cues in a virtual environment. Stereopsis was below shadows and foreshortening in terms of cues that were most valuable to the majority of people. I don't understand the highlighted bit.

[wayrad]

Originally posted by BillyJoe
I don't understand the highlighted bit. I think they're talking about the cues that give you depth perception. It's not just sterescopic vision - you also look at how big different parts of an object appear to be in relation to each other ("foreshortening"). Think of a photo of a car headed toward you at a sharp angle; on the image, the distance from the front to back bumpers is very short compared to the distance between the headlights edited to add: and features of the back end appear small compared to front end components . Your mind interprets this as an image of a car with the front end much closer to you, not a squashed car. Or you can use shadows - think of how you would shade a drawing of a circle to let the viewer know it represents a sphere. I haven't much stereoscopic vision myself, but it's perfectly possible to estimate distances by these other means, although maybe not as well. I'm easily confused by shadows through overhanging branches when I'm driving, for example.

[edited for clarity]

[Mercutio]

Well said, wayrad.

There are some really cool demonstrations you can do to show some of this. Using a stereoscope, you can create images where the retinal disparity would indicate one distance, but interposition or position in the frame, or linear perspective (for instance--or any of a number of cues) indicates a different distance. It is great fun (well, I may be easily amused) to create the stereoscope cards to demonstrate these things.

As for non-stereo vision,...I had a teacher in high school who had bi-monocular vision. (his eyes also appeared to move independently, like a chameleon's). He could literally read two books at once, although with lousy comprehension unless he practiced. In biology classes, he would look through the microscope with one eye, to his paper with the other, and essentially trace the image...very helpful. On the other hand, driving was made a bit more difficult.

[BillyJoe]

wayrad,

What you say makes sense, but I think you used only about two words out of that highlighted bit and forced them to do all the work. :D

BillyJoe

edit: Ah, I see now. Change "below" to "ranked below" and it all makes sense.

[wayrad]

Originally posted by BillyJoe
wayrad,

What you say makes sense, but I think you used only about two words out of that highlighted bit and forced them to do all the work. :D

BillyJoe

edit: Ah, I see now. Change "below" to "ranked below" and it all makes sense. Ah, sorry. Guess I didn't understand where the confusion lay. It seemed a bit odd to me that they used the word "foreshortening" since I had only run into it previously in the context of artistic techniques. :)

[epepke]

Originally posted by BillyJoe
I don't understand the highlighted bit.

They tried various combinations, images with and without stereopsis, with and without shadows, with an orthographic view and with a perspective view, etc. They measured how people were able to perform something requiring depth vision. Stereopsis had surprisingly little effect compared to the other variables.

I wish I knew where all my old SIGGRAPH proceedings were, because it was a damn good paper.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Mercutio
As for non-stereo vision,...I had a teacher in high school who had bi-monocular vision. (his eyes also appeared to move independently, like a chameleon's). He could literally read two books at once, although with lousy comprehension unless he practiced. In biology classes, he would look through the microscope with one eye, to his paper with the other, and essentially trace the image...very helpful. On the other hand, driving was made a bit more difficult.

This is a skill that can be learned even by normal folk. It just requires setting the focus of the microscope to match the paper distance.

I have really good stereopsis; however, I do have one defect. My right eye lacks a muscle to make it go to the right, so I can superimpose images easily by looking to the right. I used to amuse myself when a kid by using this to make 3-D drawings. Also, at those picture match games, I'm unbeatable. The different parts of the picture appear to me to shimmer when they are superimposed.

[BillyJoe]

epepke,

Originally posted by epepke
They tried various combinations, images with and without stereopsis, with and without shadows, with an orthographic view and with a perspective view, etc. They measured how people were able to perform something requiring depth vision. Stereopsis had surprisingly little effect compared to the other variables.Yes, I get it now. It was just the wording that confused me initially (as explained above).

BillyJoe

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by epepke


I don't know about smell, but there has been some good research about sex differences in vision, and they do exist. Lack of stereopsis affects about 10% of men but only 1% of women. Similarly color-blindness. There's also some evidence that women are more likely to be able to see further into the ultraviolet than men.

Does that mean they are less susceptible to optical illusions?

Edited to add: I mean people with this "stereopsis"?

[epepke]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


Does that mean they are less susceptible to optical illusions?

Edited to add: I mean people with this "stereopsis"?

Most of the optical illusions that I have seen are flat, so I doubt that stereopsis has much to do with it.

However, anecdotally, at Disneyworld, there's a ride called the "Haunted Mansion." In it, one is taken by a cart through a library with "busts" that are actually concave depressions but are lit so as to appear convex, the illusion being that they appear to turn to follow you. (Disneyland has a similar illusion, but it's in a walking area that is usually crowded, so it's not so effective.) The first several times I experienced this, because of my good stereopsis, it was obvious to me that they were concave. I didn't "get" the illusion until I read somewhere about what it was supposed to be. Nowadays, I'll close one eye or ignore the stereopsis info so that I can see it as intended.

[Deetee]

Do men and women have different senses?


Several spring to mind -
sense of timing, sense of humour, sense of proportion......

[bignickel]

My mother had eyes in the back of her head. That's certainly a sense I don't see in most dads.