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The short story at the end of Demigod Diaries, Son of Magic, is technically not considered canon by Rick Riordan so we still do not have a canon-accepted answer to why demigods have scents that monsters can smell. That’s alright because I’m here to talk about the schematics of such a thing.
Here are the facts as we know them:
- Demigods have heightened senses.
- Monsters can track demigods by scent and it’s said that they smell good to monsters.
- The strength of a demigod’s scent is dictated by knowledge of their divine origins and how powerful they personally are.
Things that we need to keep in mind are that in real life, everyone and everything gives off its own unique scent. We give off pheromones that state if we’re healthy or ill, if we’re ready to breed, if we’re related to each other, and many other things that our brains subtly process. Even though normal humans have poor senses of smell, we can still pick up each other’s pheromones. That’s why if you spend time around someone, you’ll memorize their personal scent and recognize it on things they spend a lot of time touching (usually fabrics).
Keeping this in mind, it makes sense that demigods would be able to smell each other just as well as monsters can. Though for demigods, they don’t want to eat each other. It should be noted that “good” monsters can also smell demigods and recognize them by scent. Throughout the series we see demigods identify each other by scent several times. Jason makes note of how Piper and Drew smell. Percy makes note of how multiple characters smell.
One thing that isn’t proven, but I’d like to argue, is that demigods don’t have a sixth sense for finding each other...it’s just pheromones! Some examples of this “sixth sense” include:
- When Luke finds Annabeth in Demigod Diaries, he knows that she’s a demigod without seeing her.
- When Percy boards the Princess Andromeda in Sea Of Monsters, he mentions that the air smells “familiar and dangerous” though he can’t put his finger on why. We later find out that Luke is on the ship, who would fall under the categories “familiar and dangerous.”
- When Percy spies on Luke and Atlas in Titan’s Curse, he wears Annabeth’s invisibility cap, yet Luke looks directly at him and knows that it’s Percy who is spying on them.
My thoughts are that demigods have a base scent, which identifies who their godly parent is. As you’ll see in the headcanon portion, a lot of the base scents are subtle and don’t immediately jump out at you, which would explain how they might not be sure who the divine parent is. Demigods also have a unique, personal aspect to their scent, based on the same criteria that dictates human scent; what we’re around, what our body washes and deodorants smell like, our own pheromones. This is how they tell each other apart from their siblings.
Now the idea of the strength of demigod scent being based on knowledge and power levels. This probably isn’t actually true in the way that Rick wrote it. Demigod scent likely gets stronger with puberty, because teenagers are stinky due to hormones and bodily changes. Demigods reaching puberty means that they’ve likely become stronger physically and have figured a few things out for themselves...if they didn’t know already. So it makes sense that with puberty, scent grows stronger and monsters attack more often. Becoming stronger and smarter are just the side effects of growing up and are not the cause.