A tin of sardines

One day quite a few years ago I went to the corner Korean deli and purchased a tin of sardines. I didn’t think anything of it at the time (this was back when I was still an omnivore). It was just one more random purchase among many.

But then, that evening, feeling peckish, I opened the can, and something very odd happened — I smelled a smell I’ve never experienced before or since.

And then time seemed to jump forward.

In particular, I have no memory whatsoever of the several minutes after those first moments opening the can. My very next memory is of furiously scrubbing the floor, the sink, and every nearby surface, while the tap remained open full blast, although the contents of that can had long since been flushed down the drain.

I am pretty sure that what had happened was this: The contents of the can were not just “bad”, they were very, very bad. The moment I opened the can, the aroma of some sort of anaerobic bacteria had hit my nostrils.

And that was the moment at which ancient life-preserving instinct swung into action.

I suspect that there are certain deadly smells that our ancestors became quite sensitive to, through a process of Darwinian selection. In other words, if you were not highly sensitive to those smells, you would die, and leave no descendants.

So I have first hand knowledge that the right sensory stimulus — for example, a particular smell — can cause us to immediately cast off the thin veneer of our recent evolution, and become a creature of pure instinct, focused only on the deadly serious process of immediate survival.

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