The 4 F's: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing and Mating

I'm currently on a scented knowledge-gathering buzz, reading up on scents and sensuality.

Did you know that there are some scents out there that can create surprisingly primal responses in humans and animals, especially when it comes to those four basic responses of feeding, fighting, fleeing, and... mating?

Back in my OAC Biology days, I briefly learned about all this stuff for a project we were never supposed to write up and I realized recently that it's been in the back of my mind ever since. So, last month I put some books on hold at the library on this topic and have been reading through them... and lemme tell ya, it's still just as engrossing as it ever was.

I'm talking about Pheromones -- those natural or synthetic odours that affect hormones that affect animal behaviour.

Pheromones are usually known for their influence on sexual behaviour in animals, but what's not commonly known is their impact on how the brain develops, what we remember, and how we learn.

If you think about it, scientists tend to spend more effort researching the 'useful' senses of sight and hearing and touch over that taboo-ridden sense of smell. However, if you look at just a few of the numbers, Smell is sadly under-rated considering it's superior impact on mammalian development...

a) Olfactory receptors (for smell) are the only ones directly hard-wired into the base of the brain. Responses to the other four senses get processed before reaching the brain through other routes.

b) Your typical human has about 100,000 genes, where only 3 of them are used for sight receptors (red, green, blue) -- but more than 1,000 of them are developed for smell receptors.

c) Your typical human can distinguish between 10,000 to 40,000 different odours, with over 100,000 for whiskey blenders or perfumers.

One book in particular has caught my attention this week: "The Scent of Eros" (James Kohl, 1 or 2). It could have been such a boring book, listing all the in-depth physiological descriptions and chemical makeups of one-celled animals through various marine life and all the way up through to humans -- but it's really not. It's so much more. It's incredibly interesting stuff and it's written in a style as if the author was just teaching a cool lecture...

What can I say? It just makes scents.