Interesting Article:
By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer
posted: 05 November 2008 09:14 am ET
Your body has a signature odor, just as your fingers have unique prints. And that "eau d'you" remains even if you change what you eat, a new study finds.
Mammals such as mice and humans are known to have unique, genetically determined body odors, called odortypes, which act something like olfactory nametags, helping distinguish to individuals from one another, even pick out a mate.
Like a fingerprint
"The findings using this animal model support the proposition that body odors provide a consistent 'odorprint' analogous to a fingerprint or DNA sample," said study author Gary Beauchamp, a behavioral biologist at Monell.
"These findings indicate that biologically based odorprints, like fingerprints, could be a reliable way to identify individuals," said lead author Jae Kwak, a Monell chemist. "If this can be shown to be the case for humans, it opens the possibility that devices can be developed to detect individual odorprints in humans."
Read the rest of the story
http://www.livescience.com/strangene...or-prints.html