Nature's approach to detecting VOCs, i.e., olfaction, does not suffer from the same limitations. The smells we experience are triggered by VOCs binding to sensory neurons in the olfactory mucosa. In this process, both the affinity of a VOC for the mucosa and the diffusion to the receptor sites play a crucial role. While equilibrium sorption measurements have received the most attention , the importance of mass transfer is clear since changes in diffusion rates through the mucus layer explain some periodic and age-related variations in olfactory sensitivity. The interplay of equilibrium and kinetic sorption characteristics determines the spatiotemporal encoding of the response pattern across the olfactory epithelium, enabling discrimination between VOCs.