In one study, women were given T-shirts worn by random men and asked to rank them by how pleasant they were. It suggests that guests of Louis XIV might have been able to pick up a thing or two about the king by sniffing the air upon arrival.Īll of this information is in our BO, but is it useful to us? Sorokowska and her colleagues have shown that it is possible to make assessments of someone's personality based on their choice of fragrances. We choose cosmetics that match our genetically-determined odour preferences. "This is important because it shows that genes influence how we smell," says Agnieszka Sorokowska, a psychologist and expert in human olfaction at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, "so, we might be able to detect genetic information about other people by smelling them." Identical twin body odour is so similar that matchers in this experiment even mistook duplicate T-shirts from the same individual as two twin T-shirts. Our body odour is specific enough, and our sense of smell accurate enough, that people can pair the sweaty T-shirts of identical twins from a group of strangers' T-shirts. While it can change depending on our diet and health, a lot of what makes our smell unique is determined by our genetics. Men's testosterone levels might improve their scent, too. This might have been useful for our ancient ancestors to detect good candidates for reproduction, suggest the authors of that paper. Men find women's body odour more pleasant and attractive during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, when women are most fertile, and least pleasant and attractive during menstruation. "There are a couple of studies that kind of contradict, but my group found that the more meat you consume the more pleasant your BO smells." "It can also reveal information about our diet," says Mehmet Mahmut, an olfaction and odour psychologist at Macquarie University, Australia. Our body odour can reveal details about our health, like the presence of diseases ( cholera smells sweet and acute diabetes like rotten apples). Whether it was because his personal hygiene was not up to the standards we might expect today, or he just enjoyed playing with scent, Louis understood that smell is important. Cut flowers adorned every room in Versailles, furniture and fountains were sprayed with perfume and visitors were even doused before entering the palace. King Louis XIV of France was obsessed with fragrance. As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our "Best of 2021" collection.
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