If eyes are the windows to the soul,
smell is the doorway. Swiss
researchers recently reported that
male body odour has a strong bearing on the choice of mates by
females. The unusual study involved
sniffmg of male T -shirts by female
volunteers, who rated shirts for
pleasantness and sexiness ( Scientific
American, VoI273,No5).
Researchers established that
females rated as more alluring the
smells from shirts that were worn by
men whose major histocompatibility complexes (MHCs), a crucial
part of the immune system, differed
the most from their own. However,
females on the contaceptive pill
preferred males of similar MHCs.
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