The smell of sharks can feel the only drop of blood dissolved in a million drops of water. In this article, we’ll look at if sharks can smell blood in water. In fact, scientists think sharks can smell 1 drop of blood a quarter of a mile away. Any bodily fluid released into the water is likely detectable by sharks. Sharks are the most mysterious and slandered creatures of the ocean. The goal was to test how far sharks could smell a single drop of blood in the water. Do sharks smell period blood? But before that, Rober needed to know that they actually preferred blood over any other scent. They detect the smell after tiny particles and chemicals from blood swim through the water and reach the shark’s sensory organs located inside the nares. Some sharks, such as the lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris), can detect a small amount of blood in the water. Do sharks really smell blood? Their ability to smell the smallest traces of blood dispersed within gallons and gallons of seawater has long been a source of fear and dread amongst swimmers and surfers. However, the scent of blood does not reach them right away. Sharks are famous for their acute and superior sense of smell. If we all close our eyes and imagine a shark encounter, we’d likely picture the exact same scene: it begins with a drop of blood leaking from your finger and diffusing into the salty water. Smell is probably the most important shark sense, so much so that sharks have been referred to as "swimming noses" [source: SeaWorld].There are some impressive statistics to back this up, too. How do sharks smell blood? The belief that sharks can smell a drop of blood in the ocean, is vastly exaggerated. Sharks can smell blood up to 1 mile away. Within a matter of seconds, a sharp fin slices through the midnight blue waves, following the scent of blood. Lastly, neither does it always cause them to attack their prey. This question originally appeared on Quora. So, sharks can’t smell a drop of blood a mile away, but one thing they’re pretty good at is detecting low concentrations of odors that indicate the presence of prey—not just blood, but all kinds of organic molecules. For several hundred million years of existence, they have only slightly changed over the past ten million years. Even a faint hint of odor is enough to alert a shark to the presence of prey. Sharks can smell blood in a maximum of 100 liters of water. Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for CineVegas. A shark’s sense of smell is powerful – it allows them to find prey from hundreds of yards away. 15:12 - Too Happy to be cool by Notebreak I’ve always wanted to test if sharks can really smell a single drop of blood in the water from 1 mile away. So I went to the Bahamas in shark infested waters and set up an experiment to get to the bottom of things. Fish Oil, Cow's Blood, Sea Water, and Urine. Menstrual blood in the water could be detected by a shark, just like any urine or other bodily fluids. So, Rober placed four surfboards equidistant from the back of the boat in the crystal clear waters of the Bahamas. Not only blood, but they can also smell anything within the parameter.