Exploring Nature: Can Birds Smell?

For a long time, many people did not believe birds could smell.

John James Audubon, one of the greatest bird artists ever, was among the many people convinced that birds had no sense of smell. He believed they found food by sight only.

It took a smart lady named Betsy Bang to launch a scientific study of the sense of smell in birds. A medical illustrator at Johns Hopkins University, she dissected and drew the nasal cavities of various birds. She could not accept that birds with large, complex cavities had no sense of smell, as all the textbooks asserted.