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.

美國一項研究顯示，女性通過腋下氣味識別生物性相關信息的能力很可能更強。

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)，用其它氣味來蒙蔽女性對腋下氣味的識別是比較困難的。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，女性敏銳的嗅覺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.

由費城蒙尼奧研究中心組織的這項研究成果已經(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.

參與試驗的女性和男性分別用鼻子去聞兩組腋下氣味，一組是獨立的腋下氣味，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.

研究人員利用嗅覺交叉適應的方法來測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.

采用這種測試方法是因為一旦鼻子對第一種氣味適應之后，它對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.

當男女在聞獨立腋下氣味的時候，男女的辨別能力旗鼓相當。

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

但是當腋下氣味中混合了其它香味的時候，32種氣味中只有兩種腋下混合氣味讓女性無法成功識別。

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: