Humans are able to tell how old other people are according to their body odor, researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia reported in PLoS ONE. The scientists added that the odor of old people is less unpleasant and less intense than young and middle-aged people’s. It seems that the idea that old people have a bad smell is a myth.
Humans, like other animals, have body odors made up of a wide range of chemical components that transmit various kinds of social data. Odors among animals help in the selection of a mate, identifying individuals, detecting kin, and differentiating sex. These odors do not remain the same during a person’s lifespan.
Johan Lundström and team set out to determine whether humans could intuitively sense the odor changes that occur during a person’s life. They gathered body odors by using a t-shirt with underarm pads – volunteers had to sleep in them for five nights. Participants were either young, middle-aged or elderly.
Other volunteers had to rate how pleasant/unpleasant and intense the odors were by smelling them. They were asked to identify, out of two scents, which came from older people, and to estimate how old the person might be.
By using their sense of smell, they were able to discriminate between the three ages. The authors added that what was driving this ability were the odors from the elderly participants.
They were surprised to find that the odors from the old-age group were described as less unpleasant and less intense than the odors from the middle-aged and young groups.
Contrary to popular belief, elderly people’s odors are less intense and less unpleasant than the odors in younger age groups
Lundström said:
“Elderly people have a discernible underarm odor that younger people consider to be fairly neutral and not very unpleasant. This was surprising given the popular conception of old age odor as disagreeable. However, it is possible that other sources of body odors, such as skin or breath, may have different qualities.”
Written by Christian Nordqvist