People are able to sniff out your age

Informative Body Odor
Humans can tell the difference between the body smells of the young
and the old,
and find that youth is smellier.

By Edyta Zielinska | May 31, 2012

Wikimedia commons, Jeremie63
Humans, like other animals, are able to discern the young from the old
by smell
alone, according to a study published yesterday (May 30) in PLoS ONE.

Body odor is thought to convey a number of social cues due to its
complexity,
including information that aids in selecting a suitable mate and
recognizing
kin. There is evidence that animals can differentiate age groups based
on smell,
and researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia
wanted to
test if the same were true in humans.

The researchers used pads sewn into the underarm area of T-shirts to
collect
body odor from male and female donors who wore them to sleep for 5
consecutive
nights. After the donors, who constituted three age groups-young
(20-30 years
old), middle-aged (45-55 years olds), and elderly (75-95 years old)-
handed in
their T-shirts, young participants were asked to smell the shirts and
assess the
age of the wearer, and judge its level of unpleasant odor.

Participants, who were both male and female, were able to discriminate
between
the three donor categories, and contrary to the anecdotal perception
of the
"old-person" smell being highly unpleasant, found the smells from the
old-age
group to be less offensive than the other two.

"Being the very first study to assess the ability of human
participants to
determine age from body odors, we focused on a very narrow research
question and
much remains to be explored," the authors wrote, such as the
biological
mechanisms that produce the different scents.

Source: TheScientist
http://the-scientist.com/2012/05/31/informative-body-odor/
.

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