I sweat a lot, and have noticed that when I eat foods like onions and garlic that my sweat smells oniony and garlicky. Duh, right. This aint earth-shattering news: if I eat a strong odoriferous spice like cumin, then tomorrow's excretions smell like a weaker version today's ingestions.
But to flip this idea: if I eat strong objectively "good"-smelling spices, like rosemary, or cloves, sassafras, or peppermint, spearmint ... then why don't I notice that my sweat smells particularly sassafrassy, or rosemary-y, clovy, or pepperminty? Maybe it does and I don't know.
Strong spices matter -- but what if only on the stinky side of things?
Backing up, obviously what smells good to my cat is very different from what smells good to me. And to you what smells nice may be different from what she likes. And then again her olfaction prowess may be far more refined and organized in her brain than yours; in terms of mate-selection it's more important that she gets it right than you do. She has to live with the consequences of having sex with you, and you can just, well, deadbeat daddy it away, and so we have spawned all these stupid reality and court tv shows.
Some cool studies exist regarding how olfaction differs between genders, and how it affects our behavior. Androstadienone, for example, is found in axillary secretions, and it affects attraction and disgust. Try hacking that.
https://www.scientif...-in-male-sweat/
If you're seeking to alter (side remark: is anyone bored yet with this overused word "hacking" in relation to biology?) hack yourself to make yourself smell good to your targeted mate, researchers have demonstrated that the less a person smells like you, the more attractive -- or less repulsive -- you will find their aromas.
Olfaction helps us to identify who may be genetically related to us, and who isn’t. That is, perhaps if she smells really terrible to you then there's a reason for that. We have a nose on our face. It gathers information. One bit of information is we'd prefer to avoid mating with biological kin. Evolution says to (mostly) avoid incest.
Edited by sthira, 05 January 2019 - 12:28 PM.