Comments on: Tears as chemical signals – smell of female tears affects sexual behaviour of men

By: Avinash Limaye

Avinash Limaye — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:18:04 +0000

I had Thyroide problem during my child hood school days, 5th to 8th – Age 8 to 12 years, Whenever any teacher point me or asks any question, wen i know the answer , Tears used to roll over, as if I dont know the answer and afraid of teacher or learning ? What is this phenomena, can any medic answer ? Now its ok after I passed that age !

By: Midtoon

Midtoon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:20:21 +0000

I wonder if the presence of these chemicals in tears may be a vestigial evidence of a previous defense mechanism against sexual assault or abuse.

By: Kat

Kat — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:27:05 +0000

HHHMMMMM — this study is a good start for a military chemical ordinance.

Toss in a gas grenade loaded with the chemical that causes men to lose testosterone levels / interest and you have a more pacified enemy!!

Talk about cheap weaponry ! No more guns & ammo — just gas grenades. The Military should start to back this type of study.

Our people wearing gas masks throwing a handfull of grenades toward the enemy — wait 10 min. War OVER!!

Or even better – make the platoons entirely out of females and they will not be affected by the chemical. They can be the Military’s new Shock and Awe Troops!

Kat
who hopes people realize the above is written as SATIRE!!!

By: KN

KN — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 16:10:33 +0000

Good place to get male tears: India!

By: Claire Ainsworth

Claire Ainsworth — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:22:05 +0000

@Ed — Editors are just as bad. If you cut something from your draft for length/ flow, they will ask you to put it in. Then they will go and take it out again at a later stage. For length/ flow. Then subs come along and complain the missing info is needed to improve the flow of the story. Back in it goes, until the piece is laid out on page and is found to be too long, so out it comes again. Then once it’s published, in come the readers’ letters…

Thanks for answering my question! I’d be interested to know the answer to the cultural diversity question too. I also wonder whether pets, whose noses are more sensitive than ours, might also pick up on these chemical signals. IME dogs get very agitated in the presence of a crying human. Given the long history of association between our two species, it might not be so surprising if they do.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:52:55 +0000

I love my commenters. I always know that if I cut something out of a piece, someone will ask about it.

@Claire – yes they covered that! I wrote a paragraph about it but had to cut for length/flow. They say that in the real world, crying often leads to physical contact. You’d try to console people who are crying, by hugging etc. That would bring your nose into close contact with far greater amounts of tear chemicals than the amounts they used in the experiment. Hence, real-world applicability.

I’m not entirely sure how convinced I am with that, if only because I assume there must be a lot of cultural diversity in terms of how people react to crying. Do all cultures react with sympathy and close contact?

By: Claire Ainsworth

Claire Ainsworth — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 11:32:34 +0000

Great post! One thing I’ve always wondered about these kinds of studies, though, is how relevant they are to real-world situations. Having a tear-soaked tab taped under your nostrils/ sniffing a vial is one thing, but how often do we get that close to someone’s tears (or armpits, for that matter, as in the sweat studies that have been done)? Surely the concentration of these molecules at normal social interpersonal distances must be pretty low? And how volatile are they anyway? Did the authors talk about that anywhere?

But given that they contain nearly 500 different proteins, (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779605/?tool=pubmed) there is clearly more to tears than meets the eye.

I’ll get me coat….

By: Juicyheart

Juicyheart — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:44:22 +0000

I guess I’m seeing the drop in testosterone, as the main finding here The lack of sexual interest would be a result of that, but wouldn’t there also be a drop in aggression and perhaps flight/fight response? Maybe testosterone is only one of many flight/fight hormone levels affected by tears. And if the signal doesn’t travel far, the self might be the target. If crying babies are any clue, this would be more of a nudge, than an on/off switch (what was the percentage drop of testosterone levels?). But some times a nudge is all that’s needed to get things going in the right direction.

By: Juicyheart

Juicyheart — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:25:36 +0000

Could the tears be operating as a self-chill-out mechanism ? Rather than a communicative function? How close do the tears have to be, to be affective? Could tears be away of calming ourselves down, that can be literally wiped away?

By: RSBR

RSBR — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:45:54 +0000

cheap and natural contraceptive.. haha