Chapter 5 Fear of hormones

What if it turns out we have pheromones?What are we going to do with these things?With so many languages ​​and so many new communication tools, why would we want to put a little smell in the air to convey information about anything?We can send letters, make phone calls, whisper secret invitations, announce upcoming parties, and even "bounce" words from the moon and make them circle the planets.Why make a gas, or a few drops of liquid, and spray them on the fence posts? Comfort, A. recently wrote that we have many reasons to believe that we do possess some anatomical structure—tufts of body hair, strategically placed apocrine glands, inexplicable fluid-secreting regions, their presence has no plausible explanation other than as a source of pheromones.There are even folds of skin in some places on our bodies, designed only for the controlled growth of bacteria.We already know that some microbes, like eighteenth-century musicians, earn their living by serving their patrons by producing chemical signals as they decorate their host's excrement.

Most of the known pheromones are small and simple molecules that work in extremely small concentrations.Only short chains of eight to ten carbon atoms are needed to issue precise, unambiguous instructions about everything—when and where to form groups, when to disband, how to behave in the presence of the opposite sex, how to identify what the opposite sex is , how to organize group members into proper hierarchies, how to mark the exact boundaries of our real estate, how to be indisputably sure that an individual is itself.Trails can be laid or followed, rivals are frightened and bewildered, friends are attracted and fascinated.

Information is urgent, but when it reaches its target, as far as we know, it is a bit of ambiguity. "At home. Four o'clock this afternoon."said the female moth.It releases a little bit of ebisol.This stuff, a single molecule can make the downy hairs of any male moth for miles around tremble, making him head the wind with inexplicable enthusiasm, but it's doubtful he knows he's being hit by a burst of chemical attractants captured by the smoke.It doesn't know.On the contrary, it may well suddenly feel that the weather has become so fine, the weather so invigorating, and the time so suitable for stretching its old wings, that it turns briskly toward the wind.On the way, while flying along a wisp of silk moth, it noticed that other male moths were also flying in the same direction, and they were all so excited, chasing after each other, as if they were just here to participate in an air competition.Then, when it reaches its destination, it may consider it the most accidental event, the greatest luck: "Look, God, what's here!"

Someone calmly estimated that if a female moth sprayed out all the moth alcohol in the liquid sac at once, it could theoretically attract a trillion male moths at once.Of course, this never happened. Fish use chemical signals to recognize individual members of the same species and to announce changes in the status of certain individuals.A catfish that is a local leader has a special smell, and once it loses this status, it will have a different smell, and all catfish will recognize its loss of status.The American catfish can instantly identify a patch of water that its latest rival has just swam through, and it can distinguish that rival from all the other fish in a school.

There is preliminary, and currently sporadic, evidence that primates possess important pheromones.Under the action of estradiol, the female monkey will produce some short-chain aliphatic compounds, and the male monkey will be very excited when he smells it.Whether primates also use pheromones for other types of socialization is not yet known. The question of whether such a thing is possible in humans has, until recently, attracted much attention.It is too early to predict the outcome.Possibly, we just retain some remnants of organs that were used earlier to produce pheromones, and the memory of those organs may be gone forever.We may be safe from new challenges to our technology, and as the 20th century draws to a close, we may only be able to focus on how to get energy directly from the sun.

But there are still some tiny hints and reminders about what will happen next.Last year, it was observed that young women living close together in dormitories had a tendency to have their periods automatically synchronized. An article in the journal Nature reports the first-hand experience of an unnamed, quantitatively minded British scientist.This man lived in isolation on an offshore island for a long time.He weighed the mustaches that fell into the electric razor during his daily shave.The scientist discovered that every time he returned to the mainland and met a girl, his beard grew much faster.It is also reported that the sweat secreted by patients with schizophrenia has a special smell. After investigation, the thing that emits that special smell is trans-3-methylhexanoic acid.

Our highly developed, impossibly ambiguous brains are still evolving under the influence of modern communications.One can imagine new ventures springing up to create new fragrances ("the scientific combination of base and odorant"), and other larger conglomerates springing up in the Jersey Bowl, towering over the top Towers of open flames, producing phenol, narcotics, and possibly other bright green sprays.They mask, camouflage, and suppress all pheromones ("the odour-free card").Gas chromatography of atmospheric samples can show spectral differences in substances released by various human activities.It can tell the difference between a football game in Glasgow, a professional titles committee meeting, and a Saturday afternoon at the summer beach.One can even imagine the heated meeting at the Pentagon and the new agreement in Geneva using gas analysis methods.

A well-trained hunting dog is said to be able to follow the footsteps of a shoed man with unerring accuracy, even if that man is crossing an open field where countless others have left their footprints, as long as the dog is given a first sniff of the man's clothing.If one had to come up with a research and development program for the National Human Odor Institute (which could be created as a joint venture with FDA and FCC budgets), that would be a groundbreaking excellent problem.This program may also generate some secondary, sub-scientific research projects that we would like to see federally funded research.If it is true, as in the novel, that smart dogs can tell the difference between a person and everyone else by smell, then this may have to be from the difference in the geometry of the 10-carbon molecule, or from several mixed pheromones. The difference in concentration is explained.If this is true, it should be of interest to those who study immunology.They have long declared ownership like a boundary post, and they have figured out the mechanisms that distinguish this from what is not.Perhaps the surprisingly sensitive and precise immune mechanism, which can detect molecules as small as haptens, represents another way to detect the same marker.Man's best friend can be used to sniff out histocompatible suppliers, etc.As long as we can manage to maintain research activity at this level, and perhaps succeed in diverting everyone's attention away from other things by freeing up a lot of money, we'll probably be out of trouble.