By which I mean, do I smell similar to my parents when an animal smells me? Or similar to a sibling, assuming I had one? I realize this is not well-worded, but oh well…
Hmm, interesting question. Obviously, yes, if only from environmental influences: Same spices in the diet, same shampoo, same laundry detergent, same molds present in the house.
Genetically, I dunno.
I seem to remember reading about a study that had people matching up babies to their mothers by sniffing clothes that the baby and mom had worn for a few hours. IIRC, some people were able to match the pairs up fairly sucessfully. No cite, someone with beter Google-fu than I might be able to scare something up.
I do know that my mom’s dog is great with almost all people. Except that he freaks out at one of my aunts, and one of her sons. Oddly, he’s fine with her other son, her daughter, and their dogs, so it’s not just an environmental thing. All I can figure is that there’s some inherited aspect to their scent that he (for whatever reason) doesn’t like. And it is scent-based, since he also reacts the same way to objects they’ve handled extensively, even when they’re not present.
Human scents apparently carry a lot of information about the immune system, so it seems like there should be some similarity among families.
My experience leads me to believe that families do have similar scents. My sense of smell varies, but I have frequently been able to detect patient’s sons/daughters/spouses from a random hospital crowd. This is usually not a really good thing. I believe it to be a combination of genetically determined chemical factors (immune signals, number of apocrine sweat glands, etc) and having similar lifestyles.
I don’t walk around sniffing people or anything, I work in a PT department.
I know a family that has its own smell. It’s not unpleasant, just distinctive. They’ve lived in several houses and everywhere they go they take the smell with them. I don’t know if it’s the people or their cooking or something, though. It’s also a lot fainter than it was, say, ten years ago, or maybe my sense of smell isn’t as good.