Have you ever met someone and instantly clicked like you’ve known each other for years but you don’t know why?
The secret may be in their scent.
A new study published in the journal, Science Advances, on Friday, reports that people with similar body odours are more likely to strike up a friendship.
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The expression opposites attract has always been questionable as we as humans tend to be drawn to people with similar traits such as age, personality, and even physical appearance but now we can add smell to the list.
Inbal Ravreby, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, found her inspiration for an experiment to test if smell influences us after she started to contemplate the phrase “there is chemistry between us.”
Ravreby and her research team used a chemical sensing device called an electronic nose, along with a collection of human “smellers” to back up its measurements to see if smell has its place in the world of attraction.
They then recruited 20 pairs of non-romantic friends, half female and half male, who said they clicked straight away on first meeting.
They found that friends who clicked when they first met smelled more alike than random pairs of people, suggesting our nose might play a part in how we know who we pick as friends.
Ravrby said it makes sense that smell plays a role in our relationships as when looking at the animal kingdom sometimes a whiff is what it takes to form a bond.
A common example would be dogs uch as dogs that sniff each other’s rear ends when they meet for the first time.
“I think it’s a reminder for us humans to appreciate how much we’re similar to other mammals,” Ravreby says.
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