Okay, I'm sure you've heard the story that sharks, the great hunters of the deep can smell the blood of humans from a mile away.

Sharks actually have the same smelling ability as any other fish. It's

Wednesday, February 28th and most years this would be the last day of the month.

It's also Science Friday. I'm John Dankowski, so I think we all know

there are a lot of myths surrounding sharks and their amazing sense of smell.

Guest host Kathleen Davis went looking for some answers to the question,

what are shark noses actually capable of?

Here she is.

Joining me now to talk, all things Shark Smell is my guest.

Dr. Lauren Simonitis, National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology at the University of Washington and Florida Atlantic University

based in Boca Raton, Florida. Her research is featured in a recent episode of

the PBS Digital Series Sharks Unknown.

Dr. Simonitis, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you guys so much for having me.

I'm so excited to talk about Sharksnutes with you guys today.

So am I.

So let's start with some basics here. How good is the sense of

smell of a shark compared to other fish? So sharks and all fish smell really really well so they can smell 10 to the negative 9 moles per liter.

So basically what that means is for one molecule of a scent in a billion molecules of water. That is how low of a

concentration they can smell. But this kind of bursts a lot of people's bubbles, but sharks actually have the same smelling ability as any other fish because sharks are fish and they smell just like a fish.

Wow, okay, so does like the size of the fish matter here?

Or we're just talking about any fish?

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