Scent signals : the silent language of sex by Hopson Janet L

Author:Hopson, Janet L
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pheromones, Sex, Smell, Pheromones, Smell, Sex, Geur, Seksualiteit, Feromonen
Publisher: New York : Morrow
Published: 1979-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

communication really be? Could the evolution of our brains have so outdistanced the evolution of our bodies that scent glands still make signals, but there is no longer anyone listening?

Mark Twain's famous cable seems relevant here: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." While a human's olfactory IQ is tiny, relative to a dog's, in an absolute sense the human nose is still a remarkably sensitive tool for perceiving the world outside the nostrils.

In a liter of air, a person can smell as little as one four-hundred-billionth of a gram of ethyl mercaptan (essence of rotten meat). That person would have to taste considerably more ethyl mercaptan before noticing it, since the sense of smell is ten thousand times more sensitive than that of taste. The nose can also smell directionally. The small difference in odor stimuli between the two nostrils are enough to reveal the direction of an odor source. The human nose is five times more sensitive than the rat's when it comes to detecting change in odor intensity. And the human's ability to adapt to odors is so striking that after a few minutes of exposure to the overpowering stench of, say, a slaughterhouse, the odor is barely noticeable—a characteristic that is both unique to the sense of smell and which makes working in the slaughterhouse possible!

The human sense of smell is certainly sensitive enough to detect, from a distance of two or three feet, the average secretions of the underarm scent glands. If this weren't the case, the deodorant manufacturers of the world would be out of business. So even though we humans are olfactory dullards compared to bloodhounds and jackrabbits, we obviously do have all the acuity necessary to sniff out sexones.

Well, now we're getting somewhere. If two healthy, libidinous adults in a hotel elevator in New York have both the equipment for making sexones and the equipment for detecting them (effective at normal standing range), then we must have had sexone love! Right?

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