If our noses were "sharper", i.e., able to distinguish on a deeper more meaningful level like a dog, could we transmit complex information with olfactory encoding?
Right now the smells are simple signals; I'm curious if a scent could be engineered to contain a language. Like paper and writing.
I'm asking for my story, in which sapient rats struggle against two-legged monsters with opposable thumbs.
I've wondered if one could build a device that outputs different combinations of distinct scents for training dogs. Like condition the dog to understand "sit" = "bacon smell" and "shake" = "cat". My theory was that dogs have more cognitive resources dedicated to processing olfactory information and so they could also be trained to understand and perform more complex tasks. Like, "bacon + cat + shoe smell" = "bark while running left"
Right now the smells are simple signals; I'm curious if a scent could be engineered to contain a language. Like paper and writing.
I'm asking for my story, in which sapient rats struggle against two-legged monsters with opposable thumbs.