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Trying to hide the funk with a fragrance equals fail for men
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Good hygiene and cleanliness play a significant role when it comes to how men and women select their mates.
It's a clinical fact that body odor reveals more than when a person last showered, it also packs important biological information. And according to a new study women are better at detecting the scent of body odor than men are.
This may explain why some women can sometimes detect when a man has been cheating. His body just naturally stinks.
"It is quite difficult to block a woman's awareness of body odor. In contrast, it seems rather easy to do so in men," said Charles Wysocki, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
In this new study, researchers think women are more sensitive to underarm smells because the biological data it contains helps them decide weather or not to run the other way or stay and get more aquainted.
The study tested 32 fragrances to see how well they could hide body odor. Among the male subjects, 19 of the fragrances were able to hide the body odor of women, however, among women, only two of the scents successfully overpowered the sweaty stench of men.
"Our studies indicate that human sweat conveys information that is of particular importance to females," Wysocki said. "This may explain why it is so difficult to block women's perception of sweat odors."
The scientists also tested the female volunteers' reactions to odors from men versus odors from women. They found that even though the female sweat smelled just as strongly as the male sweat did, it was easier to mask with perfumes. About 19 percent of the fragrances tested successfully reduced the strength of male underarm odor, while more than 50 percent decreased the intensity of female underarm odor.
The new study, published in the Flavour and Fragrance Journal, fits in with other research on how women use their sense of smell romantically. A study published in December 2008 found that women can tell when a man is interested from the scent of his sweat. The scientists found that women's brains responded differently when smelling sweat samples from men who were sexually aroused and men who weren't.
Men also use their noses to choose mates, research has shown. A January 2006 study found that the scent of a woman's body odor is more attractive to men at certain times in the female's monthly cycle. Female underarm sweat seems to communicate when a woman is fertile, making her more desirable to men.
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