Quote:So... you can smell your sister? This might be true for mice, but human interaction as far more complicated than that of mice.
Quote:It might be more complicated, but that doesn't mean smell's got nothing to do with it. Maybe I mean pheromones, Mame's right - I don't know much about pheromones.
close, i think. actually we've been ill-equipped genetically to deal with phermones ever since we evolved (or if you prefer, ever since god blessed us with the new ability to see in three colors) from bi-color vision to tri-color vision. we started relying more on visual cues when choosing a mate.
however there is very new evidence about how we sense the world available, we used to think there were n large pairs (5 maybe?) of nerves at the base o the brain, and there are in fact n+1. (6 maybe?) the "new" pair isn't new, but we never discovered it before, as it's finer than the others and is usually pulled off upon dissection along with the membrane.
a long time ago i read an article about a sensory organ near the olfactory nerves that operates with smaller particles than our usual sense of smell. pheremones or whatever, i assume these two discoveries are related. genetically we aren't equipped to deal with pheremones the way we were when we had bi-color vision, but perhaps we evolved a similar system to "cheat" into working with something like that in a new way.
there you are, pheremones, but now that "i don't know much about pheremones" excuse won't work anymore
next time you can say "but i'm not sure, i know TOO much about pheremones."