Body odour

Wedekind C. and Fun S. (1997). Body odour preferences in men and women do they aim for specific MHC combinations or simply heterozygosity Proc Royal Soc bond B 264, 1471-1479. 

Abstract Sexual orientation influences human olfactory function. Following a brief review of the biological basis of homosexuality, this chapter explores exactly how olfactory function varies as a result of sexual orientation. Three separate areas of research are considered recent studies on the neural processing of social odorants by heterosexuals and homosexuals the influence of sexual orientation on the production and perception of body odours and the influence of female sexual orientation on menstrual synchrony. 

Abstract Humans produce temporarily stable, genetically mediated odour signatures and possess the ability to recognise, discriminate and identify other people through the sense of smell. The capability of self, gender, kin and non-kin odour recognition plays a role in social interactions. It seems that despite the stability of olfactory cues, the hedonic quality of body odour may vary over time. 

It has been shown that women s body odour changes across their menstrual cycle (Havlicek et al. 2006 Singh and Bronstad 2001). Odours of women in the fertile phase were rated as the least intense and the most attractive. This may result in misidentification of women s gender in some phases of their cycle (e.g. in menstrual phase). Another possible explanation is the fact that women have on average smaller apocrine glands than men and therefore produce less intense body odour... 

Doty 1977). To sum up, men and women differ in their body odour, thus the two sexes can be discriminated but often the commonly perceived divergence in hedonic qualities of male and female body odour are likely to be a result of different intensity. 

On the whole, it seems that humans are able to recognize their own body odour and women mostly tend to assess it as pleasant and men mostly as unpleasant. The significant results from experiments dealing with the question of the sexual partner s body odour recognition indicate that humans can learn their partner s olfactory cues, probably through their mutual intimacy. 

The main aim of this paper was to document in which social contexts human body odour individuality may be functionally important. There is clear evidence that humans can recognize other people and discriminate or identify their body odour. Contrary to traditional thinking, smell therefore has the potential to be an integral... 

Havlicek, J., Bartos, L., Dvorakova, R. and Flegr, J. (2006) Non-advertised does not mean concealed. Body odour changes across the human menstrual cycle. Ethology 112, 81-90. 

Abstract Human body odour is individually specific and several lines of evidence suggest that to some extent it is under genetic control. There are however numerous other sources of variation, commonly labelled as environmental factors, which are the main aim of this paper. These include 1) reproductive status, 2) emotional state, 3) diet and 4) diseases. We primarily focus on axillary and genital odours as they have been proposed to have communicative function. We prelusively conclude that a specific diet and some diseases have major impact on variations in human body odour. 

Most recently, Havlicek, Bartos, Dvorakova and Flegr (2006) tested women s body odour repeatedly across the whole menstrual cycle and focused specifically on axillary scents. Male subjects rated the smell of the samples as least attractive during menstrual bleeding and most attractive during the follicular (i.e. fertile) period of the cycle. 

For a socially living individual it is of high relevance to be aware of the emotional state of one s conspecifics. It is a fairly well-known phenomenon that animals of different species react to odour emitted by another animal which is under stressful conditions. This led several researchers to the question of whether emotional state in humans can influence their body odour. This possibility was first tested by Chen and Haviland-Jones (2000), who asked their subjects to wear armpit pads while watching 13 min excerpts from a comedy or a fearful movie. Most of them watched both excerpts. Subsequently three and six choice tests were presented to raters who were instructed to pick the sample that smelled of people when they are happy or... 

Some 19th century writers reported about cases of distinctive body odour emanating after sexual excitement or coitus (Gould and Pyle 1896). According to our knowledge this question has not been addressed in any empirical study yet. 

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