Yes, she's strange and different...but not THAT different.

08 August 2007

What's that smell?

According to Reuters, Harvard research results just published in the journal Nature Sunday reveal that female mice became sexually voracious and tried to mate like males after scientists disabled a small sensory organ. Although scientists have long attributed aggressive male mating tactics to a testosterone-induced hard-wiring of male brains, it now appears that pheromones acting on the vomeronasal organ of females produces the same behavior in females never exposed to testosterone. In female mice, pheromones normally suppress male sex behaviors and activate female ones, the research suggests.
"...it does make you wonder if humans also contain both sets of neural circuitry in the brain, and if something other than odors is responsible for determining which set we'll use as we grow up."
The Reuters article states that higher primates, including humans, do not have a vomeronasal organ, but that assertion is not uniformly accepted and is still being researched and debated by biological scientists.

  • On 8/08/2007 10:06 AM, Blogger Fourier Analyst said…

    Some of these "scientific" studies are just full of S**T. I am strongly affected by smells, more so than my husband, but he also is pretty sensitive. I just know that his natural "male" smell is a great turn-on to me (as long as it hasn't been too long since his last shower!). And there are some people who have a smell that I cannot stand and they usually are people that I don't like anyway. Maybe not very scientific, but it'S my reality!

     
  • On 8/08/2007 8:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Is there any assertion that is uniformly accepted? It seems to me that people want to debate and argue about everything, no matter what proof they have.

     

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