Humans

We subconsciously sniff people when we first meet them and are more likely to become friends with those who have similar body odours to our own

Humans

24 June 2022

By Alice Klein
Do we become friends with people because of the way they smell?Jessica Prautzsch/plainpicture
People with similar body odours are more likely to “click” and become instant friends, according to several experiments.
When we first meet other people, we sometimes experience an “immediate strong click that makes us feel as if we have already been good friends for years”, says Inbal Ravreby at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
She wondered if this may have something to do with body odour, because previous research has found that we subconsciously sniff each other on meeting – for example, by lifting our hand to our nose after shaking someone’s hand.Advertisement
Ravreby and her colleagues recruited 20 pairs of same-sex, non-romantic friends – half female and half male – who said they clicked straight away on first meeting.
An electronic nose – a device that senses the chemical components of odours – was used to sniff T-shirts that had been worn by each of the participants. The nose found that body odour was more similar between the friend pairs than between random pairs that were formed by shuffling the participants.
A group of 25 independent adults who sniffed the participants’ T-shirts also reported that the friend pairs smelled more alike than random pairs did.

Next, Ravreby and her colleagues recruited 17 people who had never met previously and used the electronic nose to analyse their body odours. Each individual then took turns playing a non-verbal game with other participants of the same sex.
The results were consistent with the earlier experiments: the pairs that smelled more like each other were more likely to report feeling as if they clicked during this game.
The findings makes sense because research shows that we tend to become friends with people who are like us, for example, in terms of age, ethnicity, education, religion, physical appearance, personality and values, says Ravreby.
Other mammals also use smell to help decide who is friend or foe, such as dogs that sniff each other’s rear ends when they meet in a park, she says.
In contrast, heterosexual people appear to be attracted to members of the opposite sex who smell different to them. One study, for example, has found that women were more attracted to odours of men who had different immune genes to them, possibly because their pairing would produce offspring with stronger immune systems.
Journal reference: Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn0154
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Lindsey Fitzharris’s biography of Harold Gillies, who became the world’s pre-eminent specialist in plastic surgery during the first world war, depicts a forward-thinking, gifted man

Humans

22 June 2022

By Oliver-James Campbell

AROUND 40 million people were wounded or killed in the first world war. “For the first time… Europe’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities,” writes historian Lindsey Fitzharris in her informative book, The Facemaker.
Fitzharris introduces us to New Zealand-born ear, nose and throat doctor Harold Gillies. By 1917, he had become the world’s pre-eminent specialist in plastic surgery, developing techniques still used today like the “bishop’s mitre flap” for the nose, or the “tubed pedicle” for severe burns.
Plastic surgery in the 19th century was crude, with masks … More

New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss

Humans

22 June 2022

Courtesy E-WERK Luckenwalde and Karrabing Film Collective/Stefan Korte
Visit
Back to Earth at the Serpentine Galleries, London, brings together artists, scientists, poets, film-makers and more. This new exhibition is a response to the climate crisis, accompanied by a series of live events. Closes 18 September.

Read
Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them is an irreverent tour of extraordinary numbers in physics, big, small and bafflingly infinite. Be amazed as physicist and YouTuber Tony Padilla reveals the inner workings of reality. Available from 30 June.
Antonio Carlos Volante/500px/Getty Images
Watch
The Mind of a Bee will be explored by Lars Chittka, author of a book … More

From global chip shortages to the war in Ukraine, major games studios have to delay their big releases. Luckily, eager players can find solace in smaller games like Silt or Spacelines from the Far Out, says Jacob Aron

Humans

22 June 2022

By Jacob Aron

Dive into the beautiful, if creepy, underwater world of SiltSpiral Circus
Silt
Spiral Circus
PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch

AS I have written here before, the covid-19 pandemic and global chip shortage have caused havoc for the video game industry.
Whether due to the difficulty of collaborating from home, or an inability to produce consoles for eager players, major titles face repeated delays. Even the Russian invasion of Ukraine has contributed, forcing Ukrainian developer GSC Game World to … More

Even the smallest vegetable patch can benefit from the principles of crop rotation, says Clare Wilson

Humans

22 June 2022

By Clare Wilson

Halfpoint Images/Getty Images
WHEN I finally reached the top of my local area’s long waiting list for allotments, one aspect of vegetable growing that seemed daunting to me was crop rotation. This means dividing your ground into a few different patches and changing where you grow your plant varieties year on year. The intention is to reduce the build-up of pests and diseases, while also improving soil fertility.
Any guidance I could find on doing this seemed complicated, plus it required more ground than I initially had, since most of the new plot was badly overgrown. But as I learned, you don’t always … More

When journalist Paola Totaro lost her sense of smell, she set out to investigate olfactory impairment. The result, written with her husband Robert Wainwright, is engaging and hopeful

Humans

22 June 2022

By Vijaysree Venkatraman

There is no cure for anosmia, but “smell training” can helpVictor Dyomin/Getty Images
On the Scent
Paola Totaro and Robert Wainwright
Elliott & Thompson

EARLY in the covid-19 pandemic, London-based reporter Paola Totaro lost her sense of smell. Feeling trapped in a sensory void, she began investigating the mysteries of smell, and the result is the engaging and timely On the Scent, written with her husband, journalist Robert Wainwright.
The pandemic has put a spotlight on olfactory impairment. The coronavirus has affected millions of people’s ability to smell, and the symptom has persisted in … More

From work by Indigenous musicians to songs from a sci-art pioneer, the Global Music Vault is open for business as a cultural equivalent to the Svalbard Global Seed Bank

Humans

22 June 2022

By Chelsea Whyte

Disaster recovery: a global music repository joins the global seed bank to preserve Earth’s heritageCourtesy of Global Music Vault
Global Music Vault
Spitsbergen, Svalbard archipelago, Norway

TOWERING over the frozen island of Spitsbergen, the largest in the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, is a “doomsday vault”. Over 1 million seed varieties from around the world are being held in this mountainside facility, which is designed to preserve agricultural biodiversity and shield global food supplies from disaster. Now, a new kind of deposit is on its way to the mountain – the Global Music Vault … More

Stone tools found in Fordwich in Canterbury may have been made by an early human called Homo heidelbergensis

Humans

22 June 2022

By Jason Arunn Murugesu
A selection of flint artefacts excavated at Fordwich, UKAlastair Key
A cache of prehistoric tools used by ancient humans living in what is now Britain has been confirmed to be at least 560,000 years old. The artefacts are the oldest of their kind known from Britain and among the earliest known in Europe.
Archaeologists first found ancient hand axes at the site in Fordwich, Canterbury, in the 1920s. But their age was unclear.
Alastair Key at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues used a modern dating technique to determine the ages of several of the tools, which are now stored in the British Museum. They also conducted fresh excavations at the site and uncovered more evidence of ancient human activity.Advertisement
The hand axes may have been used to butcher animals and to process animal skins for making clothes. “Early humans probably needed animal skins to keep warm,” says David Bridgland at Durham University in the UK, who worked on the study.
The team used a method called infrared radio-fluorescence dating to establish how old the tools were. This method involves dating the sand in which the tools were buried, and was made possible because the new excavations helped establish which layer of sand at the site had contained the hand axes found a century ago.
The technique works by establishing when the sand grains were last exposed to daylight. “This provides a signal for how long [the tools] have been buried,” says Bridgland.

The team estimates that the tools are about 560,000 to 620,000 years old. This makes the hand axes among the earliest found in Europe. But they are still relatively young compared to hand axes found in Africa, some of which are over a million years old, says Bridgland.
“These are important findings,” says Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in the UK. “Although we have even earlier stone tool assemblages [in Britain] from Happisburgh in Norfolk and Pakefield in Suffolk, these do not include hand axes, making the Fordwich examples the oldest well-dated ones from Britain, and among the oldest known hand axes in Europe.”
“We don’t know the human species responsible but the age of about 600,000 years is close to that of the Mauer sandpit in Germany, which produced the jawbone of Homo heidelbergensis, which could have been the species responsible,” says Stringer.
Journal reference: Royal Society Open Science, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211904
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