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Why A Sense Of Smell Is Crucial For Male Sexual Conquest

A new study offers fascinating evidence that men who have no sense of smell have serious difficulty finding partners. For women, there is no such clear correlation.

The nose knows
The nose knows
Pierre Barthélémy

PARIS - For people with anosmia, success does not have a sweet smell, nor does anything else.

Anosmia is the complete or partial loss of olfaction – or put another way, people with anosmia cannot smell anything. In everyday life, those who suffer from this disease are more often than others victims of domestic accidents, because they are not able to smell gas leaks; or the burnt smell that would have told them their house or building was going up in flames; or weren’t able to identify a dangerous product (ammonia, bleach, etc.) or spoiled food.

They are not able to appreciate food in all its dimensions, since – with taste – smell makes up a big part of the pleasures of the table. But in addition to pleasures of the table, there are those of the flesh.

The February issue of the journal Biological Psychology includes a German study that questions whether or not anosmia affects sexual life. The question may seem silly if we consider that humans have stopped smelling each other’s derrieres for a long time. But this is not to say that smell has no role in social relations – in fact this sense could be a means of communication, discrete or unsuspected, for Homosapiens.

“Less explorative”

The authors of this study recruited 32 people suffering from isolated congenital anosmia and 36 age-matched healthy controls. The subjects were given a focus questionnaire on daily events related to olfaction: meals, domestic accidents, personal hygiene, and sexual history. A second questionnaire tried to uncover signs of depression. Surprisingly, researchers found that anosmic men had five times fewer sexual partners than men with a full sense of smell.

The researchers found that anosmics were more socially awkward because of their handicap: they worry about their body odor, avoid eating with others, and have a hard time assessing others. Thus anosmic men “exhibit much less explorative sexual behavior,” according to the study. In other words, when they aren’t able to smell, men aren’t good at seeking out new partners – not because smells help them, but because not smelling makes them feel less secure.

With women, it’s totally different. Their number of sexual partners does not change, even if they cannot smell men. We know that the male body odor is normally an important factor in a woman’s choice of partner, because she uses it to detect clues about a man’s health. However, the study shows that for anosmic women living with a partner, they are much less secure about their partner than a “smelling” woman.

From an evolutionary point of view, it is precisely this security that a woman looks for in a man. Without smell, she cannot be sure she has made the right choice, the one with whom she will be willing to invest maternity and children’s education, in energy and time (first, nine months, then twenty-five). And she will never know when he reeks of alcohol -- or carrys the whiff of another woman's perfume.

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food / travel

Squash That Vegan Cannelloni! The Politics Of Going Meat-Free Is Hotter Than Ever

A German politician got a taste for the backlash that can come from getting close to the vegetarian movement, especially as environmental factors make the choice even more loaded than at its birth in the animal rights movement.

Image of a person holding a colorful veggie burger.

A veggie burger in all its glory

Yannick Champion-Osselin

PARISEating meat-free can sometimes come with consequences. Just ask German center-right politician Silke Gorissen, who has been in full damage-control mode since participating at a seemingly ordinary vegan-vegetarian awareness event last month at the University of Bonn.

Gorissen, who serves as the Minister of Agriculture for North Rhine-Westphalia state, made the usual rounds at the veggie event, offering typical politician praise for the local fruit and vegetable products. And then she tasted the vegan cannelloni…

Indeed, it was the Minister’s public praise for the meatless take on the classic Italian stuffed pasta recipe (traditionally served with ground beef or pork) that set off an uproar — a reminder that the debate over vegetarian diets can still be explosive.

German daily Die Welt reported that rumors followed the University event that the government was about to declare a meat-free month for the state — rather than just the student dining hall. In the heartland of German pig farming, it makes sense that the local farmers oppose anti-meat initiatives that could affect their livelihoods.

Still, there is something about vegetarianism that goes beyond simple economics.

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