Nosey, Nosey - Noses can sniff out how old you are.

Well How Nosey Another smelly thread

Forget trying to disguise the signs of ageing with Botox, anti-ageing creams or surgery - because humans are able to sniff out a person's age through their body odour.

According to a team of scientists, humans can identify other people’s ages based on the scent of their body odour – and contrary to belief, the ‘old person smell’ is less intense and unpleasant than the scent of a younger person.

Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, collected a selection of body odours by asking participants (ranging from young, middle-aged and elderly) to insert underarm pads into their t-shirts and wear them for five days.

The sweat patches were then cut up and placed into jars ready for researchers to sniff.

The scents were assessed by a group of 41 'evaluators' aged 20 to 30 years old, who rated the intensity and pleasantness of each smell. They were also asked to guess the ages of the person who produced the smell and identify which odours came from older participants.

The study found that the evaluators were able to distinguish between the three age categories but interestingly - the body odours taken from elderly people were described as less intense and unpleasant than the smells taken from young and middle-aged donors.

Re: Nosey, Nosey - Noses can sniff out how old you are.

Nice to know I don't stink

Re: Nosey, Nosey - Noses can sniff out how old you are.

I'm doing my best to keep a straight face typing this, believe me
I suppose it's like every other part of your body, the glands or whatever that produce odours are beginning to shut down so you lose any smell you had, if you had a smell or not that is...Ah you know what I mean...what a thing to be talking about). Anyway when we are born we have a very strong smell and babies smell pleasant for a reason, so that we will like them, feed and protect them. Next (And we are going into deep waters here) comes the sexual attraction smell, that probably lasts until your 45 or thereabouts, longer in the romeo and 'ner give up types. Then you start sliding down the hill, taking the smell with you.

Re: Nosey, Nosey - Noses can sniff out how old you are.

It's a good job our sense of smell is not as good as a dogs or we would have to have pegs on our noses.