> A new study could change that. Researchers have identified an odorless compound emitted by people—and in particular babies—called hexadecanal, or HEX, that appears to foster aggressive behavior in women and blunt it in men.
I don’t know if this counts as a pheromone, but babies definitely emit _something_. As a recent father, I have had numerous people remark on how wonderful babies smell after smelling my child. I can’t smell anything. People who can smell this particular smell seem very perplexed that I can’t smell it.
For serious? The top of my kids heads smelled intoxicating for the first 6-9 months. There is still a special scent but not quite the same. And I smell it on other babies, too. It’s like smelling breast milk, but emanating from the Fontainelle
Probably TMI, but I have a very good sense of smell. I once figured out my coworker was pregnant because she basically smelled the same as a baby's fontanelle (I kept this to myself, I'm not insane).
To be a fly on the wall for the hypothetical alternative timeline where you decided to have that conversation. "Not to sound weird, but you smell like babies..."
Also TMI (and let's be honest: mega-creepy) I can tell when women are menstruating with about 90%+ accuracy if we share small-ish indoor space for a few minutes. (As confirmed by female family members.)
It's not so much an obvious smell as a perceived "sharpness" that feels related to the sense-modality of smell, but is not exactly equivalent to it. I wonder sometimes if it's a pheromone-based phenomenon.
There must be some hormone thing happening that tightens and sheens the skin. I think people say, "she's glowing."
As a teen, I once got heckled by some coworkers. "Wow, are you pregnant? Your face is radiating!" I had accidentally put on too much oily sunscreen that day. I'm a cis male with a beard.
My wife is on a number of genetic genealogy Facebook groups, and this time of year is peak season for confused new posters who are desperately trying to get some rationalization as to why their father (or mother!) didn't match with them on 23andMe. Many just cannot accept reality and continue posting convoluted possible reasons ("23andMe messed up both me and my fathers tests, but we both still matched with lots of other people?"). It's quite sad at times
Why do you think the 23andme results can't be wrong?
Many years ago my father was once given hospital test results stating he was terminally ill with a heart condition. He knew he was somehow given a different patient's test result under his name when when his family doctor asked him if he exercises (he does) and the doctor said "That can't be your patient record. You wouldn't be able to exercise if your heart was as sick as the test result states." My father is still alive and exercising regularly today.
In a world which contains huge, systematic lab screw-ups (such as the FBI Crime Lab scandals), is there good reason to believe that 23andMe is particularly reliable and competent? Vs...one of our clients at $DayJob is a home mold inspection lab. Keeping their modest mold lab Officially Certified requires daily duplication, replication, etc. of dozens of individual test results, plus statistical analysis of those, plus...
Ohmigod yes. But funnily enough only the first kid. The second, who was also breast fed and just as adorable had no particular smell, while for the first it was overpowering.
I always just assumed it was some transition from vernix covered skin to skin with healthy bacteria which we distinguish as “no smell” but almost certainly has a smell. Baby skin is pretty awesome though, as alpha male as it sounds it definitely made me want extra cuddles /s
I think bone is actually more porous than the skin barrier between your insides and the outside. Whatever it is, it’s likely to be coming from oil or sweat glands.
Slightly related anecdote: one of my kids was born with a full head of hair. The hair was the softest thing I've ever interacted with in my entire life. We also have black cat with silky fur that usually feels soft. When the baby came home, the cat's fur might as well have been sandpaper. It took weeks for us to feel the cat's fur as his normal self.
The thing here is that babies have this ethereal and indescribable effect on the people around them which postmodernist science is now trying understand.
Literally never used any of that stuff on our baby, any baby wash we use for the bath is very specifically fragrance free, and yes, there is a very distinctive "baby smell" anyway.
When I lived in my parents' home I couldn't smell anything about it. But whenever I go back there it has this distinctly earthy/wooden smell, and I'm sure it's what visitors smell when they visit it for the first time. Could the same thing (or similar) be happening with your kid, to where you're too used to being around them?
My two children smelled very different as babies. They both had smells, yes. They both smelled good. But entirely different smells. So I'm not sure there's a "baby smell", per se, so much as babies are prone to emitting smells. And because we're protective and they're cute we likely interpret those smells as pleasant.
(Damn, now I want to have more babies, but we're almost 10 years past that possibility. And still nowhere close to grandkid babies.)
Do they have kids themselves by any chance? My theory is that it “turns on” once you become a parent, because almost every non-family male I knew at the time of my “research” found baby smell from repulsive to disgusting, while their mothers couldn’t get enough of it.
Similar effect in how they look for different people.
the worst chemical warfare my kid did on me was when they were being breastfed. No matter how much sleep I had, no matter how energetic I felt, as soon as IT started latching and sucking away I just get so sleepy, always had to walk away to get anything done, otherwise I would've just napped right there and then!
You're right, I eventually scheduled my life around feeding/napping time. Previously I thought that's the free time when I can go away to do some chores such naivety in the face of chemical warfare perfected through evolution hah
Three kids here. I could never smell it either. To me babies mostly smell of poop and whatever medication of the hour you have slapped all over their bottom.
One thing I have noticed is they smell worse as they get older :)
You remind me of my sister. Once her son was a tween, she remarked "omg, <son's name> has reached puberty. I have to hold my breath to collect the laundry."
If one do the same experiment as the article describe, called the ultimatum game, and tell participants that further players will know about what decision players makes (reputation), administrating testosterone to players will result in more generosity. However if you tell players that you are giving them testosterone, regardless if it is true or not, it will then make players less generous.
Studying human behavior is difficult. It is possible that only women can smell the pheromone, or it can be culture. Its hard to untangle unless one do blind studies.
As an uncle I remember smelling top of baby's soft spot and thinking it was pleasant. Maybe it was the Johnson's product or talcum or some other baby product.
Of course, they can also smell like mother's milk if they puke it up and that shit smells sour.
I've also noticed puppies have a pleasant smell to before they get older and their breath stinks cause the owners don't brush their teeth enough.
I thought my babies smelled nice, but always assumed it was the baby shampoo or diapers, both of which had a scent. I suppose it's possible the nice smell came from the babies themselves, but it'd be hard to disentangle — especially since much of the supposed scent comes from the head, which also smells of baby shampoo.
Completely anecdotal, but I use scent-free soap, diapers, and detergent, and was never able to identify anything special about my baby’s smell. We didn’t bathe him at the hospital either so in theory his smell was as close to ‘natural’ as you can get.
I don’t think it’s baby shampoo because my partner and I both smell the shampoo, but she smells something else as well. She’s smelled the same smell since the day the baby was born, before we bathed her or put a diaper on.
They definitely have a smell. It wears off after a couple months.
My first kid stopped having the new baby smell before she started smiling, and that period in between was hard. (My second kid started smiling before the smell wore off. She's my favorite.)
Have you ever had a baby? As a father of a 7 month old who was exclusively breasfed until last month - you can definitely smell their poop. It wasn't a very strong smell, but it was there. And now that he started eating solids(but no meat yet!) his poop is proper smelly, and don't get me started on his farts.
Any solids. We recently started with fruits for a short while because that’s what our pediatrician recommended and the smell immediately got bad. Like real bad. Transitioned to vegetables and proteins and it got even worse though.
As a side note my wife and I are convinced going fruits first was not ideal as our 6 month old now loves her fruits but hates her veggies. We saw this coming but figured it better to listen to our pediatrician.
If my experience is anything to go on, starting with vegetables and meat, and complex flavours like curry only gets you a few weeks of thinking it worked but the fruit and white bread will eventually win.
I don't know if this is the same chemical that is released by decaying humans, but the few times I was exposed to decaying human bodies (forgotten elderly people in apartment complexes), I felt an overwhelming calming feeling.
The smell is overwhelming, but I specifically remember the feeling it created.
This is a very interesting effect. If it is the same chemical, I wonder if it's because the scent sends signals to your brain that indicate that you might be in danger and keeping your cool may be somehow beneficial to your survival...
If decay has already set in the threat has likely either passed or isn’t something worth having a fight or flight reflex over (like toxic food or vapors).
It’s likely just a natural process that’s useful in specific contexts (caretaking for babies) and doesn’t really affect fitness in other contexts enough to get selected out.
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Babies are funny, my 7 month old is only making noises while breathing in. I wish more of our language had breathing-in based sounds, it could double our information transfer rate!
The British Comedian Jimmy Carr has a very weird laugh that sounds like a honking seal. He has said that this is because he makes the laughing sound as he breathes in and not out.
>We cannot say that this is a pheromone,” says study author Noam Sobel, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. “But we can say that it’s a molecule expressed by the human body that influences human behavior, specifically aggressive behavior, in a predicted manner.”
I think the distinction is - is enough of it excreted that it can be transfered between people (or babies and people) or it just something that is made internally and just affects yourself,in which case it wouldn't be a pheromone.
Going to Disney, I feel deeply unnerved by all the "magic" happening behind the scenes, where forces unknown to me are observing by behavior and sculpting parts of the experience to meet me when I arrive somewhere. It's like being hunted by a bizarre and inscrutable predator.
But if I'm aware of the exquisite engineering, and understand how my behavior shapes the experience, then I'm pleased rather than startled when the host at the restaurant greets me by name even though I haven't introduced myself. I can enjoy the care and effort they're putting in, and the vast scope and scale is all the more impressive for understanding it. It starts to feel magical after all.
The loss of magic is real. Though one thing I've found helpful to understand this phenomenon what is called in some circles "quadrant absolutism." That is, reality can be understood from four perspectives, or quadrants: 1st person singular "I"; 1st person plural "we" or 2nd person "you"; 3rd person singular "it"; and 3rd person singular "its".
Quadrant absolutism is taking one or two of these perspectives as more real or true than others. Examples: A religious fundamentalist takes more real or true what his/her community or scripture (1st person plural) believes about reality, leaving out the 3rd person perspectives that would demonstrate, say evolution. Or scientific materialists who only take as ultimately real the "things out there" - chemicals, atoms, quarks, etc, considering 1st person experiences such as love to be somehow less real.
Wow, a study with a bit of work on mice and a small non-blinded study done on undergraduates at a university? What are the odds of this actually being an actual real effect? <1%?
It kinda makes sense.... after birth a woman could be recouping and 'vulnerable', in cavemen days, so maybe the pheremones are to make men who might have nefarious notions back off, and women stand up like a bear on all fours when someone tries to be shitty to them, but to also protect their baby.
Probably has a role w/ post-partum depression too, I'd imagine.
There are many plausible reasons why women would approach a man with a baby that have nothing to do with how babies smell.
For example, some women just like looking at babies. They may be reminded of their own babies, or thinking of babies that they'd like to have someday. Also, women may be more likely to talk to a man who seems non-threatening (men with babies are probably responsible for very little violent crime!).
While it is possible that babies smell a certain way, and even a whiff of that scent makes women more aggressive, I'd be surprised if this were the most relevant pathway for 'why women are more likely to approach a man with a baby than a man without a baby'. The main variable is the presence of the baby, not how the baby smells.
Now if you tell me that women were more likely to approach you when you had recently been holding a baby...then I think we can draw up articles of incorporation and start a new cologne company.
There's a lot of weird psychology in how humans work. Many men also notice that they are more interesting to other women, only after they enter a relationship with a woman. Apparently it's one of natures way of conserving energi. One woman have already spend the time to assess the man, and judged him to be a good partner, so it might be easier to just go after this pre-vetted man.
I would guess they decided to approach you before they smelled the baby. How close do you have to be to smell a baby. If they were close enough to smell I suspect the had already approached you by the strictest definition of approach.
Why bring up cis women specifically? If this response/behavior is in fact real (which I have many doubts on), you could well theorize that it is related to female hormones, which transwomen who have transitioned have as well.
you could theorize that, you could also theorize that its not just hormonal and a combination of other things on the X chromosome, which trans women do not have. so its too limiting to attempt to isolate just hormones.
the babies are the ones emitting the chemicals, we would just need them to bind to us to trigger any number of processes.
we can have chromosomal sexual dimorphism on the olfactory glands, within our lungs, on our skin, somewhere deeper in the pipeline, different gut microbes, you name it.
even if we desired trans women to have these features merged in retroactively, we still need to study the cis women created via selective pressures to understand what exactly the features are
this requires natural born females responding about their experience, so it would be counterproductive for trends to get in the way of choosing the accurate sample population
Well, there is also a possible psychological component. Lots of women end up seeing single men as a possible threat. With a baby in your arms, you can signaling that you are much safer to them in a multitude of ways, many of them in a way that both parties are not necessarily aware in a conscious level, but we do have sub conscious processes that alter our thoughts and behaviors.
But the smell is also a factor, that's the thing, humans are the single hardest animals to study, cause we are way, way too complex.
And not just non-threatening, you've also acquired a type of social proof, in that you were attractive enough that another woman allowed you to breed with her.
Hexadecanal is a sixteen-carbon chain aldehyde:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecanal
A few years back a team claimed to have isolated essence of old person, 2-nonenal, a chemically-related nine-carbon unsaturated aldehyde:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Nonenal
https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(15)41198-4/full...
The occurrence of pheromones in the animal kingdom, but so far scant evidence in humans, is a puzzle:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-human-pheromo...
Maybe there really are no human pheromones. Or maybe they're just really hard to study because studying human behavior is so hard in general.