Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Animals in a chemical world
- 2 Discovering pheromones
- 3 Sex pheromones: finding and choosing mates
- 4 Coming together and keeping apart: aggregation and host-marking pheromones
- 5 Scent marking and territorial behaviour
- 6 Pheromones and social organisation
- 7 Pheromones and recruitment communication
- 8 Fight or flight: alarm pheromones
- 9 Perception and action of pheromones: from receptor molecules to brains and behaviour
- 10 Finding the source: pheromones and orientation behaviour
- 11 Breaking the code: illicit signallers and receivers of semiochemical signals
- 12 Using pheromones: applications
- 13 On the scent of human attraction: human pheromones?
- Appendix A1 An introduction to pheromones for non-chemists
- Appendix A2 Isomers and pheromones
- Appendix A3 Further reading on pheromone chemical structure
- References
- List of credits
- Index
13 - On the scent of human attraction: human pheromones?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Animals in a chemical world
- 2 Discovering pheromones
- 3 Sex pheromones: finding and choosing mates
- 4 Coming together and keeping apart: aggregation and host-marking pheromones
- 5 Scent marking and territorial behaviour
- 6 Pheromones and social organisation
- 7 Pheromones and recruitment communication
- 8 Fight or flight: alarm pheromones
- 9 Perception and action of pheromones: from receptor molecules to brains and behaviour
- 10 Finding the source: pheromones and orientation behaviour
- 11 Breaking the code: illicit signallers and receivers of semiochemical signals
- 12 Using pheromones: applications
- 13 On the scent of human attraction: human pheromones?
- Appendix A1 An introduction to pheromones for non-chemists
- Appendix A2 Isomers and pheromones
- Appendix A3 Further reading on pheromone chemical structure
- References
- List of credits
- Index
Summary
Introduction
As we are mammals, it is highly likely that many behavioural and physiological aspects of human biology are influenced by pheromones. However, only recently has the importance of chemical cues for humans become clear, so I start by investigating the evidence that odours are important for humans. I then look at how these natural odours are produced and perceived. Human responses to perfumes and artificial scents would form a book on their own (see further reading).
Humans are just one of some 200 living species of primate (Dixson 1998). While we and our nearest relatives, the great apes (the gorillas, orang-utans, bonobos and chimpanzees), may not use odour communication in quite the same ways as the Old World and New World monkeys, chemical communication is still important to us (Fig. 13.1) (Table 13.1). Unlike other primates, humans and great apes have axillary (armpit) scent glands. In terms of numbers and sizes of sebaceous and apocrine glands (see Box 13.1), humans have to be considered the most highly scented ape of all (Stoddart 1990). These scent glands give off a plethora of natural products that envelope the body with a complex, and probably individually distinctive, volatile label (Schaal & Porter 1991).
Olfaction is the suppressed sense in contemporary Western society. We give it the least attention and seem to value it the least of our senses. However, its importance is felt when lost. Oliver Sacks quotes a man who lost his sense of smell after a head injury: ‘when I lost [my sense of smell] it was like being struck blind. Life lost a good deal of its savor – one doesn't realise how much ‘savor’ is smell.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pheromones and Animal BehaviourCommunication by Smell and Taste, pp. 270 - 301Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003