[hinkley]

Some homebrewers will wax nostalgic about how the human sense of smell/taste can detect almost all of the ways that fermentation can go wrong and make it toxic.

But we also keep pushing back earliest dates for precursors to civilization, I start to wonder if maybe there aren't graveyards of people who couldn't distinguish thymol from ethanol and selected themselves out of human history via acute liver failure.

[sudosysgen]

Animals do eat fermented food, through fallen/rotting fruits, so perhaps the thymol sensitivity predates hominids.

[thfuran]

Yeah, the ability to detect toxins likely to appear in the food supply seems evolutionarily important.

[kfarr]

Yeah exactly this is not just random, it’s “guided search” as commented by a sibling