Pheromones—what else could it be?
According to recent research, just a few molecules of these airborne chemicals may exert significant, if not stealthy, effects and influences on all of us.
Scientists have long known that pheromones provide crucial signals for many animals—particularly humans.
Pheromones are the reason that an amorous hamster he-man becomes a sexual has-been if you put the nerves in his nose out of commission.
They explain why female mice’s periods go into sync if you house them downwind of a male-mouse clubhouse, and why boar saliva can put a sow in the mood for love.
Pheromones from female strangers can send testosterone levels soaring in rams and bulls and in male rats, rabbits, and monkeys.
It’s only human to run the risk to obtain a human equivalent. So, perhaps, it’s not surprising that we’ve tried to take advantage of animal pheromones: Expensive perfumes often contain muscone (a pheromone produced by deer), civetone (from civet cats), or castoreum (from beavers).
Each morning, we jump into the shower and scrub off any lingering traces of whatever natural attractants our bodies produce, and then pickle ourselves in animal pheromones—which, while they may smell pretty good, have no effect on humans.
(Of course, it would be a little more frightening if they did. Would you really want to find yourself irresistibly drawn to stray cats in an alley on your way to work?)
Taking a different tack, scientists have dosed hapless volunteers with obvious if not malodorous candidates like armpit sweat. But no one ever managed to find a “stinking gun” until a team of researchers led by Berliner announced that they’d discovered what seemed to be real, functioning—and completely odorless—human pheromones.
The claim raises the question of whether mysteries like love (or hate) at first sight have roots in the unconscious perception of a stranger’s chemical essences.
Answers won’t come soon enough.
Berliner has been keeping his chemicals under lock and key, having created his own company to market them in perfume and cologne.
The company was recently awarded patents on a couple of the more promising molecules. Only now that the chemical formulas have been published, can other researchers try to verify—or refute—the substances’ efficacy?
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Enough, already.
Meanwhile, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
For instance, what physical cues do men look for in women they fall in love with? Don Symons, a professor of anthropology at the University of California in Santa Barbara, is currently working on a paper looking at female sexual attractiveness.
He and other researchers believe there are cues in the female body indicating fertility and youth that men subconsciously are attracted to in a mate.
Here are some specific cues:
However, what is love, exactly?
Psychology professor David Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire, sees love as:
Helen Harris, an anthropologist, defines love as the following:
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Meanwhile, Douglas Kendrick, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona, defines the act of falling in love this way:
“Women’s criteria seem to be the same as you find in all mammal–
ian families. They invest their bodies in the process. They want
someone who has established some dominance over other males…
a guy who looks like he’ll be worth something to give something to the offspring.”
At the same time, “For men, they’re looking for a partner who is attractive, which translates into healthy and fertile.”
That’s why we fall in love, but what about that crazy, obsessive, longing sensation of falling in love?
It’s simple, says Helen Harris at the University of California: Romantic love is the psychological adaptation in humans that enables us to bond with a mate. It is a transitional stage where attachment to a human being is developing.
It’s something like the bonding that mothers and infants do: the same kind of closeness, endless gazing, and touching.
In other words, “The goal of being in love with somebody is not really to have sex with them but to have them reciprocate the feeling, have them be in love with you,” says Don Symons.
“Sex will be part of what happens but not all of what happens.”
When you first fall in love, according to Harris, you need less sleep and food and are almost on a kind of amphetamine high. There is a sense of euphoria, high energy, talkativeness, a lot of touching and prolonged eye–to–eye contact.
“If it all works and you become a couple, that giddiness subsides and you reach another state called attachment. You’re comfortable, yet not in this enormous emotional state. You become like an old married couple.
“It would not be in our best interest to be in the falling in love stage for the rest of our lives; it’s too costly. It’s done its job anyway. You either formed a couple or didn’t, and you would have the offspring, and the unit becomes a family unit.”
Romantic love, says Harris, creates a family type relationship among people who are not close kin but have to be devoted and highly co-operative to look after their children.
Harris adds, “Love kicks in the long–term mating. It’s an emotion that provides a cue to commitment.”
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Top o’ the morning!