Saying that smell is subjective as a general statement is agreeable but in this case, I don’t think that what constitutes RKS is subjective. As stated, it is implied that since smell can’t be standardized it can’t be used as an identifying trait since we aren't certain we’re all experiencing the exact same thing. We’ve all smelled dead animals. It is a distinct smell. You may focus on certain notes or nuances in the profile relative to someone else but you’re not going to confuse the smell of dead animals with cinnamon rolls. That two people use related but different descriptive words to convey a smell is more indicative of the difficulty in conveying ineffable concepts (
try to explain the color orange). You could say rotten eggs and burnt hair both “stink” but they have distinct bouquets of stink that are identifiable across multiple people.
Everybody seems to agree on the smell that makes Roadkill Skunk; it’s in the name. A dead skunk that has been run over. So there are 2 big components you need: 1) Dead animal (
Sulfur Dioxide and Methane) and 2) Skunk spray (
Thiols-more sulfur). So this bouquet has clearly identifiable components that must be present to qualify as a roadkill skunk. If this were
not the case, there'd be tons of people running around convinced they all have RKS instead of the actual case of no one having it. How do we all know we don't have RKS if it
wasn't identifiable by smell?
Interesting and Related:
Skunk spray is made up of sulfur based chemicals called thiols. Recently, it has been discovered that cannabis also has thiols with one in particular called prenylthiol. This has been ID’d as the chemical that is associated with the skunk odor of bud. The interesting part is that prenylthiol is not a terpene but a different class of chemical altogether. This class of chemicals being shared with the skunk spray means that a skunk smell is also a chemically measurable trait.
General Article about it:
Here’s the chemistry behind marijuana’s skunky scent
Research Paper behind it:
Identification of a New Family of Prenylated Volatile Sulfur Compounds in Cannabis Revealed by Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography
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