Thinking about smell a few years ago I realized that individual differences in odor perception might be due to missing smell receptors. In color vision we have

Thinking about smell a few years ago I realized that individual differences in odor perception might be due to missing smell receptors. In color vision we have only three different kinds of cones. Color blindness due to a missing type of cone is present in a substantial portion of the population. I believe one of my children is colorblind, and it took a long time to figure that out. With a missing smell receptor it would be even more difficult to detect the differences between people.