Do they issue from the skin generally, like sweat? Are they concentrated in certain body areas known for odor, like the armpits and crotch? Are there specific glands that produce them, specific sites that emit them? How much is known about this topic? I figure it can’t be completely solved, or there would be products that actually deliver what some women’s perfume and men’s cologne ads promise.
Do human sex pheromones actually exist? I’ve seen speculation on this but no real research. The speculation was along the lines of; “Well, other animals have them. Why not us?” The only thing I’ve seen making an actual claim that human sex pheromones exist and have an effect was an ad in the back of a magazine trying to sell some sort of magic fluid to put in my aftershave. Not the best kind of cite.
Hard to say. We really don’t know much about human pheromones. Most of the work I’ve seen published on human pheromones always refers to them as “putative human pheromones”. The usual candidate proposed is androstadienone, and the usual means of secretion is armpit sweat (“axillary secretions”). This would be the fatty, pungent sweat produced by the apocrine sweat glands in the armpit.
So, some evidence that some chemicals may modulate, prime or signal in humans. But no firm evidence that sex pheromones actually exist or have an effect. I guess I’ll save my noney and not buy that stuff out of the magazine.
