Abstract
IT has long been known that animals use their olfactory senses to communicate information, including sexual status, individual identification and maternal attraction1–3. Olfactory communication has been demonstrated throughout the Mammalia, including the primates4,5, and there has been speculation as to whether or not it exists in some form in man6,7. Substances are know to exist on man that serve an olfactory function in other animals8 and there are many apocrine and sebaceous glands on the human body that produce such secretions. We have done two experiments, the first to determine whether adults can identify an individual and determine his or her sex by the odour of an article of clothing, and the second to examine whether an infant can identify its mother's odour by a behavioural response.
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RUSSELL, M. Human olfactory communication. Nature 260, 520–522 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/260520a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/260520a0
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