Identity by smell (was Re:silly walks department)

From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Thu Jun 08 2000 - 07:35:18 MDT


From: "John Calvin" <mercurial@disinfo.net>
>
> I do have a couple of friends that I am sure I could recognize by smell.

I can identify all of my female companions by smell; every girl smells
slightly different. It is like any other identity marker. In fact, I
think that most people could accurately identify individuals they are
intimately familiar with using any one of their five senses. I would
expect that the same applies to males, but I've never been in a position
to know :^)

However, going out on a limb, I've also noticed that ethnic groups as a
whole have a characteristic smell that is not dependent on where they
actually live. In other words, a Japanese girl born and raised in New
York will have a similar type of smell to one born and raised in Tokyo,
but will smell distinctly different than, say, a girl of Mexican descent.

In other words, it has always seemed to me that genetically similar groups
of people have a similar and characteristic smell, although each
individual in that group will have their own unique version of it. I
wonder how much smell actually influences mate selection and
supports similar types of subconscious communication.

-James Rogers
 jamesr@best.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:29:04 MST