Smell of female 13:43 04 April 2001
Men can tell by smell alone when women are at their most fertile, say researchers from Texas.
They reached this conclusion after getting men to sniff T-shirts worn by women during fertile and infertile stages of their menstrual cycles.
Overwhelmingly, men rated the smells from the T-shirts to be most "pleasant" and "sexy" when they had been worn by women during their fertile phase.
"It may be a cue that men pick up subtly," says Devendra Singh, the psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin who made the discovery. But Singh doesn't think the smell would play as important a role as visual cues in determining sexual attractiveness.
The findings shed light on how our ancestors selected mates and may even open new avenues for treating infertility.
[...]http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/love/dn591