is smell important to you?

A bunch of (slightly kooky) studies are out there looking at how mate choice (love?) is influenced by scent. I refer mostly to the (in)famous studies involving women sniffing t-shirts worn by men for two consecutive nights (also known as the 'sweaty t-shirt experiment') and rating attractiveness.

From what I've read, the 'sweaty t-shirt' literature is in a bit of a bind, as their previous paradigms looking at femininity/masculinity in terms of facial features and symmetry has been put in question. One of the more established ideas though, is that females have more enticing odors during their ovulatory phase than when they're not ovulating (now you know when your prime is!!). A more recent focus is on major histocompatibility complexes (MHCs). Long story short, mates with very different MHCs produce offspring that have strong immune systems, something that would be strongly selected for in this evolutionary world that we live in.

These studies posit that we can detect these differences through olfaction, and that there is therefore an evolutionary and genetic basis for attraction.

Some (definitely kooky) companies have taken this a step further and now offer tests to say how good your genetic match is with your partner. For the singles out there, they even offer to set you up with someone who has good homology according to those genetic principles I've outlined.

I thought I'd share this with you because of Angela's post about soulmates. If you draw some wild conclusions, these studies do sort of support the notion of someone with a 100% match. Granted, it doesn't discount the fact that there might be more than one person out there, but the chances of more than one match would slim down significantly if you're looking for that 100%. On the other hand, if you're thinking straight up probabilities, then arguing for a single soul-mate opens up the possibility of having no soul mate.

ANYWAYS. What I MEAN to ask is...

What does smell mean to you?





Yes. This is the random crap I read in lab while my experiments are running. References follow; the first two are non-technical.

References:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025491.300-love-special-how-to-pick-a-perfect-mate.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026873.600-dna-dating-can-genes-help-you-pick-a-mate.html
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/6dkb8bvt3rpe5j46/
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xhp/34/4/884.html
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/eg93h541912m44g0/
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/f542428772r96x64/