Olfax

Olfax was the general term for any of a number of species who sensed their world primarily through scent. Many such species lived on planets with very little light, whether because they were far from their sun or because they were permanently covered by clouds. Weequays and Sljee were among the Galaxy's sapient olfaxes.

One species of olfaxes which evolved on one of these dark planets had half of their brain volume devoted to their sense of smell. Though they had poor eyesight, their sense of smell had abilities which parallelled Human three-dimensional color vision. These olfaxes could not smell out the position of a person in a room, making them difficult to surprise and impossible to hide from. They could smell a person's emotional state, and tell if they were being lied to. They also communicated with one another using a sophisticated smell-based language. Finally, they could even smell certain forms of radiation by smelling the ionization and ozone produced. They were not very successful as spacers, however, as their chemical-based computers were slower than the galactic standard, and it was impossible to smell anything in vacuum. A group of these olfaxes were in the Mos Eisley Cantina when Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi entered to find passage to Alderaan, but their specific species is unknown.