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Browsing by tag: pheromones

By smell alone

Posted by Robin on 30 July 2009 20 Comments

Nine blindfolded women were asked to determine, by smell alone, whether any among a group of nine men was worth pursuing.

Three men had just showered using a body wash with synthesized pheromones, three had used a body wash without pheromones, and the rest had worked up a sweat and not washed at all. They then rubbed their arms on scent strips, and handed them to the women to sniff.

— Find out what happened at Banking on a Chemical Reaction at the New York Times. Many thanks to Jessica for the link!

Pheromones used to control vampire fish

Posted by Robin on 20 January 2009 5 Comments

US researchers deployed a laboratory version of a male sea lamprey pheromone to trick ovulating females into swimming upstream into traps.

The sea lamprey, sometimes dubbed the "vampire fish", has parasitised native species of the Great Lakes since its accidental introduction in the 1800s.

[...] This is thought to be the first time that pheromones have been shown to be the basis of a possible way of controlling animal pests other than insects.

— From Sex smell lures 'vampire' to doom at BBC News.

Wasted money

Posted by Robin on 19 January 2009 16 Comments

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, he says, various compounds were proposed as being human pheromones, including a family of steroids related to testosterone. "But there is no good evidence that these actually are the human pheromones," Wyatt says. "The evidence is always circumstantial and rather poor."

Wyatt says if you bought a jar of something called human pheromones, it would be "wasted money."

— Tristram Wyatt of the University of Oxford talks to NPR about pheromones. Read more (or listen to the radio spot) at Pheromones: No Love Potion No. 9.

The most primitive subconscious urges

Posted by Robin on 15 January 2009 Leave a Comment

It is 50 years since the term pheromone was coined, but the jury is still out as to whether there are genuinely human smells which can elicit the most primitive subconscious urges in those around us.

While insects and animals respond automatically to chemical clues given off by their contemporaries and even have a special organ dedicated to the job of doing so, scientists have struggled to pin down a single component which has such a strong physiological effect on humans.

— From The human smell: a powerful force? at BBC News.

Kids & mice

Posted by Robin on 6 August 2007 Leave a Comment

When I was a kid, kids didn't smell. At least, they didn't smell like anything other than kids. And there wasn't anything like "body spray" for boys. You had "Right Guard" deodorant, which had a purpose and was forced upon you at a certain age by parents, and aftershave, which was only to be used "after" you were old enough to shave.

— Columnist Peter McKay in Boys stockpile from grooming aisle (link no longer active, sorry!), in which his son purchases, among other things, Axe Voodoo. And in possibly related news:

Female lab mice tend to be docile, passive creatures. But by either genetically shutting down or surgically removing their ability to smell pheromones, scientists transformed them into aggressive, pelvic-thrusting, vocalizing lotharios—without any significant rise in testosterone or other steroid hormones.

— Read the rest in Scientific American.

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