Research suggests smell may help us sense illness, emotion and risk long before we notice anything consciously.
Articles on Body odour
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Sweat cools you down. Bacteria make you smell.
Humans have the hardware for scent, but hygiene and fragrance norms shape what we notice, fear and judge.
Showers help remove dirt, oil, dead skin cells and sweat from our skin.
The science of smell is an exciting area of research.
Fresh sweat doesn’t have a smell. It’s the bacteria that feast on sweat that cause the bad smell.
It all comes down to an oily secretion from special glands beneath our skin, which are very prevalent under the armpits, and more active at certain times.
Birds use body odour to smell out potential mates, and partners who are genetically unrelated to them smell more attractive.
Sweating is usually our body’s way of stopping us from overheating. But if excess sweating is a problem for you, there’s help.
In the future, traps for mosquito that spread the dengue and chikungunya virus could be made from the carbon dioxide in human breathe as well as body odour.
Top contributors
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Senior Lecturer in Clinical Microbiology, University of Leicester
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Professor of Experimental Psychology, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet
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Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
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Assistant Professor of Medicine, Bond University
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Associate Professor of Science & Medicine, Bond University
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Caroline Robinson is a Friend of The Conversation.
Associate Professor Podiatry, Charles Sturt University
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McCall MacBain Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University
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Associate Professor of Analytical Chemistry, Dublin City University
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Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol
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Commissioning Editor, Health + Medicine and Host of Strange Health podcast, The Conversation
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PhD Student in Cerebrovascular Physiology, The University of Queensland
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Medical Entomologist at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Nairobi