WEBVTT 00:00:00.940 --> 00:00:03.918 "Pheromone" is a very powerful word. 00:00:03.918 --> 00:00:08.852 It conjures up sex, abandon, loss of control, 00:00:08.852 --> 00:00:12.444 and you can see, it's very important as a word. 00:00:12.444 --> 00:00:17.517 But it's only 50 years old. It was invented in 1959. 00:00:17.517 --> 00:00:20.116 Now, if you put that word into the web, 00:00:20.116 --> 00:00:21.886 as you may have done, 00:00:21.886 --> 00:00:24.418 you'll come up with millions of hits, 00:00:24.418 --> 00:00:26.533 and almost all of those sites are trying to sell you 00:00:26.533 --> 00:00:28.592 something to make you irresistible 00:00:28.592 --> 00:00:31.865 for 10 dollars or more. 00:00:31.865 --> 00:00:34.318 Now this is a very attractive idea, 00:00:34.318 --> 00:00:36.530 and the molecules they mention 00:00:36.530 --> 00:00:38.634 sound really science-y. 00:00:38.634 --> 00:00:40.178 They've got lots of syllables. 00:00:40.178 --> 00:00:43.171 It's things like androstenol and drostenome 00:00:43.171 --> 00:00:45.342 or drostendienome. 00:00:45.342 --> 00:00:47.164 It gets better and better, 00:00:47.164 --> 00:00:49.774 and when you combine that with white lab coats, 00:00:49.774 --> 00:00:51.226 you must imagine that there is 00:00:51.226 --> 00:00:53.910 fantastic science behind this. 00:00:53.910 --> 00:00:57.772 But sadly, these are fraudulent claims 00:00:57.772 --> 00:01:02.351 supported by dodgy science. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:02.351 --> 00:01:04.949 The problem is that, although there are many 00:01:04.949 --> 00:01:07.514 good scientists working on what they think 00:01:07.514 --> 00:01:09.314 are human pheromones, 00:01:09.314 --> 00:01:11.969 and they're publishing in respectable journals, 00:01:11.969 --> 00:01:13.670 at the basis of this, 00:01:13.670 --> 00:01:16.806 despite very sophisticated experiments, 00:01:16.806 --> 00:01:19.439 there really is no good science behind it, 00:01:19.439 --> 00:01:22.761 because it's based on a problem, 00:01:22.761 --> 00:01:26.171 which is, nobody has systematically gone through 00:01:26.171 --> 00:01:28.352 all the odors that humans produce, 00:01:28.352 --> 00:01:31.059 and there are thousands of molecules that we give off. 00:01:31.059 --> 00:01:34.056 We're mammals. We produce a lot of smell. 00:01:34.056 --> 00:01:36.144 Nobody has gone through systematically 00:01:36.144 --> 00:01:38.911 to work out which molecules really are pheromones. 00:01:38.911 --> 00:01:40.621 They've just plucked a few, 00:01:40.621 --> 00:01:42.660 and all these experiments are based on those, 00:01:42.660 --> 00:01:45.570 but there's no good evidence at all. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:45.570 --> 00:01:47.888 Now, that's not to say 00:01:47.888 --> 00:01:49.950 that smell is not important to people. 00:01:49.950 --> 00:01:53.422 It is, and some people are real enthusiasts, 00:01:53.422 --> 00:01:56.539 and one of these was Napoleon. 00:01:56.539 --> 00:01:58.811 And famously, you may remember 00:01:58.811 --> 00:02:01.668 that out on the campaign trail for war, 00:02:01.668 --> 00:02:04.505 he wrote to his lover, Empress Josephine, 00:02:04.505 --> 00:02:08.369 saying, "Don't wash, I'm coming home." 00:02:08.369 --> 00:02:09.801 (Laughter) 00:02:09.801 --> 00:02:11.602 So he didn't want to lose any of her richness 00:02:11.602 --> 00:02:13.581 in the days before he'd get home, 00:02:13.581 --> 00:02:16.328 and it is still, you'll find websites 00:02:16.328 --> 00:02:19.860 that offer this as a major quirk. 00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:21.394 At the same time, though, 00:02:21.394 --> 00:02:23.397 we spend about as much money 00:02:23.397 --> 00:02:25.328 taking the smells off us 00:02:25.328 --> 00:02:27.969 as putting them back on in perfumes, 00:02:27.969 --> 00:02:32.120 and perfumes are a multi-billion dollar business. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:32.120 --> 00:02:34.903 So what I want to do in the rest of this talk 00:02:34.903 --> 00:02:40.121 is tell you about what pheromones really are, 00:02:40.121 --> 00:02:43.189 tell you why I think we would expect 00:02:43.189 --> 00:02:45.587 humans to have pheromones, 00:02:45.587 --> 00:02:50.096 tell you about some of the confusions in pheromones, 00:02:50.096 --> 00:02:53.182 and then finally, I want to end with 00:02:53.182 --> 00:02:55.182 a promising avenue which shows us 00:02:55.182 --> 00:02:59.006 the way we ought to be going. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:59.006 --> 00:03:03.101 So the ancient Greeks knew 00:03:03.101 --> 00:03:07.375 that dog sent invisible signals between each other. 00:03:07.375 --> 00:03:09.659 A female dog in heat 00:03:09.659 --> 00:03:11.515 sent an invisible signal to male dogs 00:03:11.515 --> 00:03:13.360 for miles around, 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:15.365 and it wasn't a sound, it was a smell. 00:03:15.365 --> 00:03:17.446 You could take the smell from the female dog, 00:03:17.446 --> 00:03:19.989 and the dogs would chase the cloth. 00:03:19.989 --> 00:03:21.327 But the problem for everybody 00:03:21.327 --> 00:03:23.690 who could see this effect 00:03:23.690 --> 00:03:25.332 was that you couldn't identify the molecules. 00:03:25.332 --> 00:03:27.695 You couldn't demonstrate it was chemical. 00:03:27.695 --> 00:03:29.042 The reason for that, of course, 00:03:29.042 --> 00:03:30.785 is that each of these animals 00:03:30.785 --> 00:03:32.371 produces tiny quantities, 00:03:32.371 --> 00:03:34.014 and in the case of the dog, 00:03:34.014 --> 00:03:36.492 males dogs can smell it, but we can't smell it. 00:03:36.492 --> 00:03:40.770 And it was only in 1959 that a German team, 00:03:40.770 --> 00:03:44.482 after spending 20 years in search of these molecules, 00:03:44.482 --> 00:03:48.303 discovered, identified, the first pheromone, 00:03:48.303 --> 00:03:51.451 and this was the sex pheromone of a silk moth. 00:03:51.451 --> 00:03:53.605 Now this was an inspired choice by Adolf Butenandt 00:03:53.605 --> 00:03:55.166 and his team, 00:03:55.166 --> 00:03:57.171 because he needed half a million moths 00:03:57.171 --> 00:04:00.408 to get enough material to do the chemical analysis. 00:04:00.408 --> 00:04:02.177 But he created the model 00:04:02.177 --> 00:04:04.941 for how you should go about pheromone analysis. 00:04:04.941 --> 00:04:07.562 He basically went through systematically, 00:04:07.562 --> 00:04:10.267 showing that only the molecule in question 00:04:10.267 --> 00:04:12.223 was the one that stimulated the males, 00:04:12.223 --> 00:04:14.146 not all the others. 00:04:14.146 --> 00:04:16.384 He analyzed it very carefully. 00:04:16.384 --> 00:04:18.241 He synthesized the molecule, 00:04:18.241 --> 00:04:21.189 and then tried the synthesized molecule on the males 00:04:21.189 --> 00:04:24.095 and got them to respond and showed it was, 00:04:24.095 --> 00:04:26.083 indeed, that molecule. 00:04:26.083 --> 00:04:28.043 That's closing the circle. 00:04:28.043 --> 00:04:30.765 That's the thing which has never been done with humans: 00:04:30.765 --> 00:04:33.915 nothing systematic, no real demonstration. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:33.915 --> 00:04:36.109 With that new concept, 00:04:36.109 --> 00:04:37.988 we needed a new word, 00:04:37.988 --> 00:04:40.853 and that was the word "pheromone," 00:04:40.853 --> 00:04:44.254 and it's basically transferred excitement, 00:04:44.254 --> 00:04:46.523 transferred between individuals, 00:04:46.523 --> 00:04:49.439 and since 1959, pheromones have been found 00:04:49.439 --> 00:04:51.484 right the way across the animal kingdom, 00:04:51.484 --> 00:04:53.646 in male animals, in female animals. 00:04:53.646 --> 00:04:55.331 It works just as well underwater 00:04:55.331 --> 00:04:57.243 for goldfish and lobsters. 00:04:57.243 --> 00:04:59.130 And almost every mammal you can think of 00:04:59.130 --> 00:05:00.933 has had a pheromone identified, 00:05:00.933 --> 00:05:04.613 and of course, an enormous number of insects. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:04.613 --> 00:05:06.542 So we know that pheromones exist 00:05:06.542 --> 00:05:08.743 right the way across the animal kingdom. 00:05:08.743 --> 00:05:11.196 What about humans? 00:05:11.196 --> 00:05:12.914 Well, the first thing, of course, 00:05:12.914 --> 00:05:14.601 is that we're mammals, 00:05:14.601 --> 00:05:16.280 and mammals are smelly. 00:05:16.280 --> 00:05:17.956 As any dog owner can tell you, 00:05:17.956 --> 00:05:19.767 we smell, they smell. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:19.767 --> 00:05:21.688 But the real reason we might think 00:05:21.688 --> 00:05:23.623 that humans have pheromones 00:05:23.623 --> 00:05:26.821 is the change that occurs as we grow up. 00:05:26.821 --> 00:05:28.992 The smell of a room of teenagers 00:05:28.992 --> 00:05:30.961 is quite different 00:05:30.961 --> 00:05:33.301 from the smell of a room of small children. 00:05:33.301 --> 00:05:36.503 What's changed? And of course, it's puberty. 00:05:36.503 --> 00:05:38.112 Along with the pubic hair 00:05:38.112 --> 00:05:39.765 and the hair in the armpits, 00:05:39.765 --> 00:05:43.207 new glands start to secrete in those places, 00:05:43.207 --> 00:05:45.852 and that's what's making the change in smell. 00:05:45.852 --> 00:05:47.910 If we were any other kind of mammal, 00:05:47.910 --> 00:05:49.509 or any other kind of animal, 00:05:49.509 --> 00:05:50.936 we would say, 00:05:50.936 --> 00:05:52.388 "That must be something to do with pheromones," 00:05:52.388 --> 00:05:54.434 and we'd start looking properly. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:54.434 --> 00:05:57.022 But there are some problems, and this is why, 00:05:57.022 --> 00:05:59.969 I think, people have not looked for 00:05:59.969 --> 00:06:02.646 pheromones so effectively in humans. 00:06:02.646 --> 00:06:04.647 There are, indeed, problems. 00:06:04.647 --> 00:06:06.651 And the first of these 00:06:06.651 --> 00:06:08.428 is perhaps surprising. 00:06:08.428 --> 00:06:09.992 It's all about culture. 00:06:09.992 --> 00:06:11.899 Now moths don't learn a lot 00:06:11.899 --> 00:06:15.716 about what is good to smell, but humans do, 00:06:15.716 --> 00:06:17.842 and up to the age of about four, 00:06:17.842 --> 00:06:20.261 any smell, no matter how rancid, 00:06:20.261 --> 00:06:22.044 is simply interesting. 00:06:22.044 --> 00:06:24.412 And I understand that the major role of parents 00:06:24.412 --> 00:06:27.483 is to stop kids putting their fingers in poo, 00:06:27.483 --> 00:06:30.411 because it's always something nice to smell. 00:06:30.411 --> 00:06:33.242 But gradually we learn what's not good, 00:06:33.242 --> 00:06:34.862 and one of the things we learn 00:06:34.862 --> 00:06:36.797 at the same time as what is not good 00:06:36.797 --> 00:06:38.725 is what is good. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:38.725 --> 00:06:40.927 Now, the cheese behind me 00:06:40.927 --> 00:06:44.888 is a British, if not an English, delicacy. 00:06:44.888 --> 00:06:48.205 It's ripe blue Stilton. 00:06:48.205 --> 00:06:52.187 Liking it is incomprehensible to people from other countries. 00:06:52.187 --> 00:06:56.192 Every culture has its own special food 00:06:56.192 --> 00:06:58.138 and national delicacy. 00:06:58.138 --> 00:07:00.033 If you were to come from Iceland, 00:07:00.033 --> 00:07:01.434 your national dish 00:07:01.434 --> 00:07:04.066 is deep rotted shark. 00:07:04.066 --> 00:07:06.640 Now, all of these things are acquired taste, 00:07:06.640 --> 00:07:09.680 but they form almost a badge of identity. 00:07:09.680 --> 00:07:14.078 You're part of the in group. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:14.078 --> 00:07:18.252 The second thing is the sense of smell. 00:07:18.252 --> 00:07:21.751 Each of us has a unique odor world, 00:07:21.751 --> 00:07:24.001 in the sense that what we smell. 00:07:24.001 --> 00:07:26.889 We each smell a completely different world. 00:07:26.889 --> 00:07:28.658 Now, smell was the hardest 00:07:28.658 --> 00:07:30.499 of the senses to crack, 00:07:30.499 --> 00:07:32.204 and the Nobel Prize awarded to 00:07:32.204 --> 00:07:33.987 Richard Axel and Linda Buck 00:07:33.987 --> 00:07:36.540 was only awarded in 2004 00:07:36.540 --> 00:07:39.072 for their discovery of how smell works. 00:07:39.072 --> 00:07:40.627 It's really hard, 00:07:40.627 --> 00:07:43.338 but in essence, nerves from the brain 00:07:43.338 --> 00:07:45.341 go up into the nose 00:07:45.341 --> 00:07:47.892 and on these nerves, exposed in the nose 00:07:47.892 --> 00:07:50.816 to the outside air, are receptors, 00:07:50.816 --> 00:07:53.695 and odor molecules coming in on a sniff 00:07:53.695 --> 00:07:55.645 interact with these receptors, 00:07:55.645 --> 00:07:59.804 and if they bond, they send the nerve a signal 00:07:59.804 --> 00:08:02.442 which goes back into the brain. 00:08:02.442 --> 00:08:04.554 We don't just have one kind of receptor. 00:08:04.554 --> 00:08:06.750 If you're a human, you have about 400 00:08:06.750 --> 00:08:08.885 different kinds of receptors, 00:08:08.885 --> 00:08:11.382 and the brain knows what you're smelling 00:08:11.382 --> 00:08:13.193 because of the combination of receptors 00:08:13.193 --> 00:08:15.916 and nerve cells that they trigger, 00:08:15.916 --> 00:08:17.614 sending messages up to the brain 00:08:17.614 --> 00:08:20.078 in a combinatorial fashion. 00:08:20.078 --> 00:08:21.470 But it's a bit more complicated, 00:08:21.470 --> 00:08:23.295 because each of those 400 00:08:23.295 --> 00:08:25.836 comes in various variants, 00:08:25.836 --> 00:08:27.807 and depending which variant you have, 00:08:27.807 --> 00:08:31.699 you might smell coriander, or cilantro, that herb, 00:08:31.699 --> 00:08:34.367 either as something delicious and savory 00:08:34.367 --> 00:08:36.491 or something like soap. 00:08:36.491 --> 00:08:39.517 So we each have an individual world of smell, 00:08:39.517 --> 00:08:41.238 and that complicates anything 00:08:41.238 --> 00:08:43.274 when we're studying smell. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:43.274 --> 00:08:45.906 Well, we really ought to talk about armpits, 00:08:45.906 --> 00:08:49.462 and I have to say that I do have particularly good ones. 00:08:49.462 --> 00:08:51.554 Now, I'm not going to share them with you, 00:08:51.554 --> 00:08:53.343 but this is the place that most people 00:08:53.343 --> 00:08:55.071 have looked for pheromones. 00:08:55.071 --> 00:08:56.673 There is one good reason, 00:08:56.673 --> 00:08:59.997 which is, the great apes have armpits 00:08:59.997 --> 00:09:02.455 as their unique characteristic. 00:09:02.455 --> 00:09:04.686 The other primates have scent glands 00:09:04.686 --> 00:09:06.426 in other parts of the body. 00:09:06.426 --> 00:09:08.910 The great apes have these armpits 00:09:08.910 --> 00:09:11.117 full of secretory glands 00:09:11.117 --> 00:09:13.728 producing smells all the time, 00:09:13.728 --> 00:09:17.248 enormous numbers of molecules. 00:09:17.248 --> 00:09:18.981 When they're secreted from the glands, 00:09:18.981 --> 00:09:20.995 the molecules are odorless. 00:09:20.995 --> 00:09:22.780 They have no smell at all, 00:09:22.780 --> 00:09:24.749 and it's only the wonderful bacteria 00:09:24.749 --> 00:09:26.962 growing on the rainforest of hair 00:09:26.962 --> 00:09:28.618 that actually produces the smells 00:09:28.618 --> 00:09:30.679 that we know and love. 00:09:30.679 --> 00:09:32.339 And so incidentally, if you want to reduce 00:09:32.339 --> 00:09:33.969 the amount of smell, 00:09:33.969 --> 00:09:35.909 clear-cutting your armpits 00:09:35.909 --> 00:09:37.945 is a very effective way of reducing 00:09:37.945 --> 00:09:39.629 the habitat for the bacteria, 00:09:39.629 --> 00:09:41.796 and you'll find they remain less smelly 00:09:41.796 --> 00:09:43.750 for much longer. 00:09:43.750 --> 00:09:46.436 But although we've focused on armpits, 00:09:46.436 --> 00:09:47.853 I think it's partly because they're the least 00:09:47.853 --> 00:09:50.178 embarrassing place to go and ask people 00:09:50.178 --> 00:09:51.850 for samples. 00:09:51.850 --> 00:09:54.322 There is actually another reason why we might not 00:09:54.322 --> 00:09:57.158 be looking for a universal sex pheromone there, 00:09:57.158 --> 00:10:00.777 and that's because 20 percent of the world's population 00:10:00.777 --> 00:10:04.662 doesn't have smelly armpits like me. 00:10:04.662 --> 00:10:08.568 And these are people from China, Japan, 00:10:08.568 --> 00:10:11.353 Korea, and other parts of northeast Asia. 00:10:11.353 --> 00:10:14.677 They simply don't secrete those odorless precursors 00:10:14.677 --> 00:10:18.730 that the bacteria love to use to produce the smells 00:10:18.730 --> 00:10:21.429 that in an ethnocentric way we always thought of 00:10:21.429 --> 00:10:23.544 as characteristic of armpits. 00:10:23.544 --> 00:10:27.971 So it doesn't apply to 20 percent of the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:27.971 --> 00:10:30.483 So what should we be doing 00:10:30.483 --> 00:10:33.746 in our search for human pheromones? 00:10:33.746 --> 00:10:36.198 I'm fairly convinced that we do have them. 00:10:36.198 --> 00:10:38.231 We're mammals, like everybody else 00:10:38.231 --> 00:10:42.036 who's a mammal, and we probably do have them. 00:10:42.036 --> 00:10:43.713 But what I think we should do 00:10:43.713 --> 00:10:45.512 is go right back to the beginning, 00:10:45.512 --> 00:10:48.201 and basically look all over the body. 00:10:48.201 --> 00:10:49.832 No matter how embarrassing, 00:10:49.832 --> 00:10:53.079 we need to search and go for the first time 00:10:53.079 --> 00:10:55.310 where no one else has dared tread. 00:10:55.310 --> 00:10:56.978 It's going to be difficult. 00:10:56.978 --> 00:10:59.653 It's going to be embarrassing, but we need to look. 00:10:59.653 --> 00:11:02.083 We also need to go back to the ideas 00:11:02.083 --> 00:11:05.787 that Butenandt used when he was studying the silk moth. 00:11:05.787 --> 00:11:08.925 We need to go back and look systematically 00:11:08.925 --> 00:11:11.493 at all the molecules that are being produced, 00:11:11.493 --> 00:11:13.816 and work out which ones are really involved. 00:11:13.816 --> 00:11:15.602 It isn't good enough simply to pluck a couple 00:11:15.602 --> 00:11:17.936 and say, "They'll do." 00:11:17.936 --> 00:11:19.485 We have to actually demonstrate 00:11:19.485 --> 00:11:22.275 that they really have the effects we claim. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:22.275 --> 00:11:25.429 There is one team that I'm actually very impressed by. 00:11:25.429 --> 00:11:28.425 They're in France, and their previous success 00:11:28.425 --> 00:11:32.652 was identifying the rabbit memory pheromone. 00:11:32.652 --> 00:11:35.271 They've turned their attention now 00:11:35.271 --> 00:11:38.656 to human babies and mothers. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:38.656 --> 00:11:41.667 So this is a baby having a drink of milk 00:11:41.667 --> 00:11:44.490 from its mother's breast. 00:11:44.490 --> 00:11:46.113 Her nipple is completely hidden 00:11:46.113 --> 00:11:47.899 by the baby's head, 00:11:47.899 --> 00:11:51.510 but what you'll notice is a white droplet 00:11:51.510 --> 00:11:53.141 with an arrow pointing to it, 00:11:53.141 --> 00:11:56.310 and that's the secretion from the areolar glands. 00:11:56.310 --> 00:11:59.084 Now, we all have them, men and women, 00:11:59.084 --> 00:12:02.298 and these are the little bumps around the nipple, 00:12:02.298 --> 00:12:04.177 and if you're a lactating woman, 00:12:04.177 --> 00:12:06.274 these start to secrete. 00:12:06.274 --> 00:12:09.183 It's a very interesting secretion. 00:12:09.183 --> 00:12:12.296 What Benoist Schaal and his team developed 00:12:12.296 --> 00:12:14.643 was a simple test to investigate 00:12:14.643 --> 00:12:17.269 what the effect of this secretion might be, 00:12:17.269 --> 00:12:20.315 in effect, a simple bioassay. 00:12:20.315 --> 00:12:22.880 So this is a sleeping baby, 00:12:22.880 --> 00:12:27.929 and under its nose, we've put a clean glass rod. 00:12:27.929 --> 00:12:30.021 The baby remains sleeping, 00:12:30.021 --> 00:12:32.481 showing no interest at all. 00:12:32.481 --> 00:12:34.475 But if we go to any mother 00:12:34.475 --> 00:12:36.954 who is secreting from the areolar glands, 00:12:36.954 --> 00:12:38.461 so it's not about recognition, 00:12:38.461 --> 00:12:40.719 it can be from any mother, 00:12:40.719 --> 00:12:42.231 if we take the secretion 00:12:42.231 --> 00:12:45.185 and now put it under the baby's nose, 00:12:45.185 --> 00:12:47.176 we get a very different reaction. 00:12:47.176 --> 00:12:50.008 It's a connoisseur's reaction of delight, 00:12:50.008 --> 00:12:52.047 and it opens its mouth 00:12:52.047 --> 00:12:53.723 and sticks out its tongue 00:12:53.723 --> 00:12:55.860 and starts to suck. 00:12:55.860 --> 00:12:58.045 Now, since this is from any mother, 00:12:58.045 --> 00:13:00.102 it could really be a pheromone. 00:13:00.102 --> 00:13:01.861 It's not about individual recognition. 00:13:01.861 --> 00:13:03.577 Any mother will do. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:03.577 --> 00:13:05.092 Now, why is this important, 00:13:05.092 --> 00:13:07.308 apart from being simply very interesting? 00:13:07.308 --> 00:13:09.475 It's because women vary 00:13:09.475 --> 00:13:12.248 in the number of areolar glands that they have, 00:13:12.248 --> 00:13:14.204 and there is a correlation between the ease 00:13:14.204 --> 00:13:16.636 with which babies start to suckle 00:13:16.636 --> 00:13:18.938 and the number of areolar glands she has. 00:13:18.938 --> 00:13:21.696 It appears that the more secretions she's got, 00:13:21.696 --> 00:13:24.878 the more likely the baby is to suckle quickly. 00:13:24.878 --> 00:13:26.758 If you're a mammal, 00:13:26.758 --> 00:13:29.121 the most dangerous time in life 00:13:29.121 --> 00:13:31.750 is the first few hours after birth. 00:13:31.750 --> 00:13:35.035 You have to get that first drink of milk, 00:13:35.035 --> 00:13:38.821 and if you don't get it, you won't survive. 00:13:38.821 --> 00:13:40.325 You'll be dead. 00:13:40.325 --> 00:13:42.653 Since many babies actually find it difficult 00:13:42.653 --> 00:13:44.442 to take that first meal, 00:13:44.442 --> 00:13:46.589 because they're not getting the right stimulus, 00:13:46.589 --> 00:13:49.459 if we could identify what that molecule was, 00:13:49.459 --> 00:13:51.596 and the French team are being very cautious, 00:13:51.596 --> 00:13:53.801 but if we could identify the molecule, 00:13:53.801 --> 00:13:56.355 synthesize it, it would then mean 00:13:56.355 --> 00:13:58.261 premature babies would be more likely to suckle, 00:13:58.261 --> 00:14:01.479 and every baby would have a better chance 00:14:01.479 --> 00:14:03.140 of survival. 00:14:03.140 --> 00:14:05.058 So what I want to argue is this is one example 00:14:05.058 --> 00:14:08.236 of where a systematic, really scientific approach 00:14:08.236 --> 00:14:11.198 can actually bring you a real understanding 00:14:11.198 --> 00:14:12.706 of pheromones. 00:14:12.706 --> 00:14:15.065 There could be all sorts of medical interventions. 00:14:15.065 --> 00:14:16.574 There could be all sorts of things 00:14:16.574 --> 00:14:18.104 that humans are doing with pheromones 00:14:18.104 --> 00:14:20.372 that we simply don't know at the moment. 00:14:20.372 --> 00:14:21.978 What we need to remember is pheromones 00:14:21.978 --> 00:14:23.516 are not just about sex. 00:14:23.516 --> 00:14:25.422 They're about all sorts of things to do 00:14:25.422 --> 00:14:26.955 with a mammal's life. 00:14:26.955 --> 00:14:29.604 So do go forward and do search for more. 00:14:29.604 --> 00:14:30.994 There's lots to find. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:30.994 --> 00:14:33.097 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:33.097 --> 00:14:36.878 (Applause)