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Comment by bananapear | Hacker News Reader

Indole occurs naturally in human feces and has an intense fecal odor. At very low concentrations, however, it has a flowery smell, and is a constituent of many perfumes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indole

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A derivate of that family is Skatole [1], with its name appropriate to the fact that 1 gram can stink out a whole factory hall (at 0.001446 mg/m³ stink tolerance [2], 1 gram stinks up to 714.000 m³ of volume).

Fascinatingly, the same is valid here as for indole: at extremely low doses the stuff can end up being used in perfume [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skatole

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20170507164421/https://www.bmlfuw...

[3] https://www.parfumo.de/Duftnote/Skatol

Lilies always seem like they are on the precipice of smelling like death. I wonder if it’s the same thing.

Now I have the urge to find lilies and thoroughly confirm this.

To me it's sweet from a distance and gets almost chemical smelling when you get close. When you really get up in there it feels like there's about to be a phase change in the smell to something very unpleasant.

Interesting, however the indole ring is very common in biomolecules, and is also present in tryptophan, serotonin, melatonin and others. Most of these will not have fecal odors, I3PA probably won't either. For another stinky indole derivative, check out 3-methylindole.

It is a semiochemical for many flowering plants.

I’ve smelled pure indole before and it doesn’t stink. It smells like mothballs.

However some indole derivatives smell bad so my guess is that description came from impure indole.

I know you'd like to think your shit don't stank, but
Lean a little bit closer, see
Roses really smell like poo-poo-ooh

Yeah, roses really smell like poo-poo-ooh

Sounds like ambergris.

Ambergris synthesis uses two opposite substances: ambroxide and ambrinol. The former is clean, fresh. The later, similar to indole, smells pretty awful in isolation, but gives depth to the composition when both are mixed.

Indole is the characteristic smell of withered flowers.

“Geez Honey, your perfume smells like shit”

“No, really, that’s a compliment”

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