Article: Close family smells worse than a stranger

[Guest guest]

Ok, this is the last smelly article for today .. I just thought it was

very interesting - the whole olfactory system and its detection of such

subtle (and not so subtle) scents that we don't even think of much of

the time ...

 

*Smile*

Chris (list mom)

 

Pretty Perfume Bottles and Pendants &

Turkish Rose Absolute To Put Into Them

http://www.alittleolfactory.com

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992705

 

 

 

Close family smells worse than a stranger

 

 

09:50 22 August 02

 

 

 

 

People do not like the smell of close family members, new research shows

- the aversion might help prevent incest

 

People can recognise the smell of their close family members - but

surprisingly, they do not like it. This aversion may help prevent

incest, the discoverers speculate.

 

Most studies of smell recognition in humans have looked at mothers and

their newborn babies, who learn to recognise each other's smell soon

after birth. But Tiffany Czilli's team at Wayne State University in

Detroit wanted to know how well all the other members of the family

would fare in a sniff test.

 

She recruited 25 families with at least two children aged between 6 and

15, and gave the participants odourless T-shirts, odourless soap and

resealable bags with their names on them. The volunteers were instructed

to sleep in the T-shirts for three nights, wash only with the soap

provided and seal the shirts into the plastic bags each morning.

 

Czilli then asked everyone to sniff two T-shirts, one worn by a family

member and one by an unknown and unrelated person. She asked fathers and

mothers if they could detect the scent of their children, and children

if they could identify their parents or siblings. She also asked each of

the participants which odour they preferred.

 

Both mothers and fathers recognised their pre-adolescent offspring,

Czilli found, though mothers tended to be more accurate. Neither parent

could distinguish between their children, however.

 

 

Strong aversion

 

 

For their part, pre-adolescent children aged 5 to 8 did not recognise

their mother's smell, while older children, aged 9 to 15, did. Breastfed

sons were the exception: they could recognise their mothers. And all the

children recognised dad's smell.

 

When asked which smells they liked, the answers were even more

intriguing. The volunteers far preferred the smells of other people to

those of their own family members. Mothers especially disliked their

children's smells, while children had a strong aversion to their dad's

scent. " Recognition and preferences can operate independently, " Czilli

says.

 

She thinks that disliking the smell of close family might be part of the

mechanism that helps prevent incest. Particularly notable is the fact

that opposite-sex siblings disliked each other's smells, while same-sex

siblings did not. She also speculates that the aversion to dad's odour

could reflect social distancing and independence in the child.

 

The avoidance of inbreeding could definitely be at work, says Dustin

Penn at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. But he warns that

asking people about their preferences can be unreliable.

 

" Just because people say they 'prefer' something doesn't mean they'll

act in a preferential way, " he says. Smell preference is context

dependent, he adds. Liking someone's smell doesn't always mean you'd

like to sleep with them.

 

 

 

Alison Motluk