zaneblue: Can't find the study on vaginal secretions swabbed under men's noses and then having their testosterone levels measured, but I did find this one. We are mammals after all.
Friday April 6, 2001
Men Sense 'Scent of a Woman'
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Could love truly be in the air?
Researchers in Texas believe men become especially attuned--and
attracted to--female body odors during the most fertile stage of the
menstrual cycle.
``These findings raise serious doubts about conventional scientific
wisdom that human female ovulation is concealed...and that men cannot detect when women are
ovulating,'' according to Drs. Devendra Singh and P. Matthew Bronstad, psychologist researchers at
the University of Texas in Austin.
Some studies have suggested that female physiology and behavior change in subtle ways during
ovulation. For example, one study suggested that women's bodies undergo aesthetic changes--such as
a subtle alteration in skin tone--as they approach and pass through ovulation.
But is any of this picked up by men? To find out, Singh and Bronstad collected a month's worth of
T-shirts worn by 19 female college students. The T-shirts were then handed out at random to 52 men,
each of whom was asked to smell each garment, rating its odor for ``intensity,'' ``pleasantness,'' and
''sexiness.''
None of the men were previously acquainted with any of the women, nor were they informed of the
nature of the research. And the women were told to avoid perfumes and given unscented
products--such as soap, laundry detergent and shampoo--to use during the month of T-shirt wearing.
The result? Men consistently rated the odors of T-shirts worn during the most fertile stage of the
menstrual cycle ``as more pleasant and sexy than odors from T-shirts worn during the non-ovulatory
luteal phase,'' the authors report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
The power of these olfactory cues to ovulation did not seem to dim over time--men favored T-shirts
worn during ovulation even when presented with garments last worn 7 days previously.
``These findings suggest that ovulation may not be concealed and that men could use ovulation-linked
odors in their mate selection,'' Singh and Bronstad conclude.
SOURCE: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 2001;268:797-801.