how do you know but ev’ry bird

that cuts the airy way,

Is an immense world of delight,

clos’d by your sense five? – William Blake

In this poetic inquiry, William Blake invites us to ponder a world beyond the reach of our immediate senses, suggesting that every creature experiences delights invisible to us. It’s a compelling introduction to what becomes a central theme of any safari adventure: the realm of scent.

The Scents of Safari

Every moment on safari is accompanied by a distinct aroma, each one capable of living in your memory and allowing you to drawback nostalgic scenes from your time on safari.

This time of year, the reserve is a tapestry of botanicals—crunched under the wheels of the Land Rover as it rolls over wild sage and basil, each scent weaving its way into the overall fabric of your safari.

As we wind our way back to camp, a sudden, potato-like fragrance invades the air, reminiscent of a hearty, home-cooked meal. Staying at Londolozi, you quickly realize that each season has its bouquet of scents – marking the shifts in weather, the ebb and flow of vegetation, and the comings and goings of wildlife.

Humans and the Underrated Sense

While sight, hearing, and touch demand our immediate presence—sometimes even placing us in danger—our sense of smell allows a more lingering, investigative interaction with our environment. It is perhaps the least understood of our senses, often requiring comparisons to others for its descriptions.

Despite our evolutionary journey, which favoured other senses, our ability to smell continues to play a crucial role, particularly in evoking memories. Modern advancements have extended human capabilities to see further and hear wider, yet when it comes to smell, technology lags behind.

As the sun sets and guests enjoy their evening drinks, watching majestic cloud formations, conversations often turn to this topic. It’s an invitation to consider how we perceive and remember through the world of scents.

Think of the smell of summer: as moisture meets the dry African soil, it releases petrichor—a uniquely energetic, earthy aroma. As you journey around the reserve, the scents of middens and dung signal the presence of elephants and rhinos, while the familiar scent of freshly buttered popcorn betrays a nearby leopard marking its territory. These smells subconsciously bind to the visuals around you, becoming imprinted in your memory. We interact with our environment daily through smell, but how proficient are we really at detecting and processing these scents?”

Some studies indicate that our sense of smell is vastly inferior to that of animals, perhaps lacking by factors ranging from billions to merely tenfold. Despite such an apparent deficiency, humans utilize their sense of smell in surprisingly complex ways. Particularly, smell is deeply intertwined with memory. Consider nostalgia: the scent of a familiar perfume or the aroma of freshly baked bread can vividly resurrect long-forgotten memories. Over time, as humans evolved to prioritize other senses and as our brains grew larger, our reliance on smell diminished.

3 members of a wild dog pack use the vantage point of a termite mound to try find the rest of the pack. Dogs will often get ‘lost’ during the mayhem of a hunt, using vocal communication and a strong scent they are usually able to rejoin fairly quickly.

Perhaps a reason is smell does not allow itself to be described, but only compared with similarity through another of our ‘5’ senses. Take the English language for example – with just three dedicated smell words: fragrant, musty and stinky. Everything else is just a synonym.

The Animal Kingdom: Masters of Scent

Imagine a world not defined by hard visual boundaries but by a mosaic of scents, seeping through darkness and around corners. In this world, animals are constant olfactory explorers. Animals smell what is in the dense thicket, rather than us trying to see through the impenetrable branches and leaves.

Take a moment to consider this: when you breathe, the air goes primarily to your lungs via a single airstream allowing you to smell at the same time. For animals like dogs, however, the act of sniffing divides the airstream. Most air supports breathing, while a dedicated stream is funnelled towards olfaction, allowing scents to linger and accumulate, enhancing detection. Olfaction is detected via a labyrinth of thin, bony walls that are plastered with a sticky sheet called the olfactory epithelium. Neurons here detect the smell and send it directly to the olfactory bulb in the brain and the animal detects smell.

Elephants, with their astonishing 2000 olfactory receptor genes, wield their trunks like sophisticated sensory devices. With a simple flick, they can detect food, danger, and even distant herds without a visual cue.

Animals have a dedicated compartment for smell, a key difference from us humans. When we exhale, we clear odours from our noses, causing our sense of smell to flicker. In contrast, canines experience a smoother, continuous sense of smell because odours remain in their nasal passages and are refreshed with each sniff.

One of the Majingilane Males turns his nose up to the wind to get a better smell.

The Ongoing Dance of Past and Future

Smell operates in both future and past tenses. It is a past tense sense (read that three times). It arrives before the subject and lingers long after, allowing animals to navigate a world that is both imminent and remembered—tomorrow, today, yesterday and last week’s world.

Consider the Flehmen response observed in many animals: by mixing airborne molecules with saliva, they can decode complex messages about their environment and fellow creatures.

As we watch a male lion analyze the estrus state of a female through this grimace, we’re reminded of how integral these scents are to the continuity and rituals of animal life.

Returning to the human experience, our safari scents do more than just mark our presence in nature; they connect us to a primal understanding that, although less pronounced than in animals, remains a potent link to our environment and our memories.

Each safari leaves a scented imprint on our memory, echoing Blake’s musings. As we navigate through the landscape, we’re enveloped by a world of delights—seen, heard, and, most intimately, smelled.