Love at first sight – that sudden spike in heartbeat, unshakable dizziness and the stereotypical loss of all sense of logic and time once considered impossible to define may actually be unraveling faster than most fathom. And it is doing so in the most surprising of directions: science. Yes, the once hallowed “matters of the heart” may finally be demystified from a test tube.
From compatibility to cultural backgrounds and similarities in character, the one factor we rarely consider is that chemistry, actual Chemistry, between two individuals may play a role much bigger than ever imagined in the attraction betwixt a lass and a lad.
I guess I was deceived then, when I read somewhere that the tingly feeling you get when you are falling for someone was your common sense taking a permanent holiday.
It may actually have been you smelling love. And yes, it has scientific backing.
This love story started proper in the 1950’s as the harvest of the genitalia of thousands of insects, five hundred thousand to be exact. A team of scientists headed by Nobel Prize–winning German biochemist; Adolf Butenandt, were then investigating the use of chemical signals, or ecto-hormones as they were then called, as a form of communication by moths. Their investigations brought astounding information to light — chemical signals exchanged between members of a species that elicited specific reactions.
The phenomenon explained the male moth’s uncanny ability to accurately locate the female without sight and hearing that had baffled scientists and naturalists alike, particularly because the females were not found at specific locations. This indicated that the male without sight or hearing found the female by following a chemical trail emitted by the female — the pheromone.
But before Butenandt another scientist had accidentally “stumbled” upon the chemical in the 18th century. He was a French naturalist and philosopher named Charles Bonnet. Bonnet’s discovery began when he found a long trail of ants and wondered how they managed to move along a single definitive track with none wandering from it. So he placed a colony of ants on one end of a table and a small pile of sugar at the other. He noticed that the colony of ants used the same path from the colony to the pile and back. So he rubbed off the track midway to the colony and eventually there was an accumulation of ants at the spot where he rubbed the track proving that the insects followed a chemical trail to the pile.
Years after Butenandt’s work, subsequent research indicated even more astounding results; the chemical was not limited to insects but was found in the bodies of mammals; playing a role similar to that it played in insects. In mammals, such as the dog or the horse, pheromones are the culprits responsible for helping the males detect females in heat up to three miles away!
The biggest breakthrough in research of the field came in the year, by the Endocrinologist Dr. Winifred Cutler and her colleagues who discovered for the first time evidence of pheromones in humans. This added a new and unforeseen perspective to the concept of attraction.
According to their research, pheromones are emitted through the sweat pores and urine. Although other studies suggests that many other parts of the body also emit pheromones, most agree that the most pre-eminent is the armpit and the reaction to them differs in each sex.
According to some studies, females exposed to male pheromones are likely to view the male in question as more masculine and attractive. It also tends to trigger a general improvement in mood an increase in libido and a heightened focus for females. Thus in simple terms, a strong enough concentration of male pheromones may increase his “ratings” as a potential mate. Turns out it was not all about the muscle and moustache (or beard, depending on your preference) after all.
But before you go sweating up a storm in attempt to woo that ‘special someone’ notice how I used the term ‘enough’. Well according to recent studies, just about 10% of males excrete pheromones in the adequate enough amounts to have visible effects on female behavior.
Some studies even contend the belief that pheromones have any effect at all on humans. This school of thought is actually based on solid ground — the lack of the vomeronasal organ (VNO) in humans. The vomeronasal organ is the main tissue proven to be responsible for detection of pheromones in non-human mammals and non-mammal animals (like reptiles) who communicate via pheromones.
However, in humans our VNOs have been proven to be dormant and unable to play the role it plays in other species. Even so, some scientists argue that our olfactory organs(smell receptors) may be able to detect pheromones unconsciously, though not as distinctly as the vomeronasal organ could. (So hey, all hope may not be lost just yet.)
You may be wondering why most reference to human pheromones in this article puts the female on the receiving end? The answer is simple, males excrete hormones roughly four times more than women and male hormones have been found to have more profound effect on females than otherwise.
But the females cannot be counted out just yet, there is an interesting twist to the nature of female pheromones. Not only do they trigger male responses, female pheromones have been found to have an effect on other females.
Here is the catch; the pheromones released by a female during the ovulation period may affect the ovulation periods of other females who for example may live in the same house. Rings a bell, doesn’t it? It may very explain the strange phenomenon of menstrual synchrony, scientifically coined as the McClintock effect discovered and published by Martha McClintock in 1971.
According to her article, which was published in the British multidisciplinary scientific journal – Nature, women who live together are likely to have their menstrual cycles occur within closer intervals than it used to months before.
Also, the pheromones of females are suspected to cause a boost in the self-esteem of men. This was discovered when males exposed to copulins, a hormone-like substance related with the ovulation cycles of women, showed an increase in their estimates of their sexual desirability. But even here there is a complication, these pheromones are rarely secreted in the sufficient concentrations to have a strong enough effect. To remedy this problem, Dr. Winifred Cutler synthesized the first commercial human pheromone. It was a public hit! And although questions have been asked about the effectiveness of the chemical, many other brands of pheromones have sprung up ever since and the public doesn’t seem to be satisfied just yet.
Interestingly, even some perfumes claim to have a percentage of their content made of pheromones giving you “confidence” near that special someone. I don’t know about you, but I become a bit skeptical when a company tries to sell me what is basically a love potion.
But just in case you are a member of the sub-species of humans who have preference for glimpsing at the pictures and reading the article in small pockets rather than in its fullness, then simply remember that whenever two individuals become so oogle-eyed and enthralled by each other to care about anything else, there may be more than just love in the air.
Sources: www.medicalnewstoday.com; www.psychologytoday.com; Williams, M. N., & Jacobson, A. (2016). Effect of copulins on rating of female attractiveness, mate-guarding, and self-perceived sexual desirability. Evolutionary Psychology, 14(2)
