女人靠鼻子選男友

Women may be better at sniffing out biologically relevant information from underarm sweat, a US study suggests.

美國(guó)一項(xiàng)研究顯示，女性通過(guò)腋下氣味識(shí)別生物性相關(guān)信息的能力很可能更強(qiáng)。

Researchers found it was difficult to mask underarm odour when a woman was doing thesmelling, but quite easy to do so when it was a man.

研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，用其它氣味來(lái)蒙蔽女性對(duì)腋下氣味的識(shí)別是比較困難的。相比之下，男性則更好蒙騙。

They speculate that a woman's highly attuned smell radar might help her select a mate.

研究人員由此猜測(cè)，女性敏銳的嗅覺(jué)可能有助于她們選擇適合自己的伴侶。

The study, by Philadelphia's Monell Center, appears in Flavour and Fragrance Journal.

由費(fèi)城蒙尼奧研究中心組織的這項(xiàng)研究成果已經(jīng)在《香料與香味雜志》上發(fā)表。

In the study, women and men rated the strength of underarm odours, both alone and in conjunction with various fragrances.

參與試驗(yàn)的女性和男性分別用鼻子去聞兩組腋下氣味，一組是獨(dú)立的腋下氣味，另一組是腋下氣味與其它多種香味混合而成的氣味。

The fragrances were selected to test their ability to block underarm odour through a method known as olfactory cross-adaptation.

研究人員利用嗅覺(jué)交叉適應(yīng)的方法來(lái)測(cè)試他們辨別腋下氣味的能力。

This occurs when the nose adapts to one odour, and then also becomes less sensitive to a second odour.

采用這種測(cè)試方法是因?yàn)橐坏┍亲訉?duì)第一種氣味適應(yīng)之后，它對(duì)第二種氣味的判斷靈敏度就減弱了。

Sniffed alone, the underarm odours smelled equally strong to men and women.

當(dāng)男女在聞獨(dú)立腋下氣味的時(shí)候，男女的辨別能力旗鼓相當(dāng)。

But when fragrance was introduced, only two of 32 scents successfully blocked underarm odour when women were doing the smelling.

但是當(dāng)腋下氣味中混合了其它香味的時(shí)候，32種氣味中只有兩種腋下混合氣味讓女性無(wú)法成功識(shí)別。

In contrast, 19 fragrances significantly reduced the strength of underarm odour for men.

與之相比，19種腋下混合氣味成功蒙騙了男性的鼻子。

Lead researcher Dr Charles Wysocki, a behavioural neuroscientist, said: