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"Pheromone" is a very powerful word.

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It conjures up sex, abandon, loss of control,

3
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and you can see, it's very important as a word.

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But it's only 50 years old. It was invented in 1959.

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Now, if you put that word into the web,

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as you may have done,

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you'll come up with millions of hits,

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and almost all of those sites are trying to sell you

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something to make you irresistible

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for 10 dollars or more.

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Now, this is a very attractive idea,

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and the molecules they mention

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sound really science-y.

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They've got lots of syllables.

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It's things like androstenol, androstenone

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or androstadienone.

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It gets better and better,

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and when you combine that with white lab coats,

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you must imagine that there is

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fantastic science behind this.

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But sadly, these are fraudulent claims

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supported by dodgy science.

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The problem is that, although there are many

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good scientists working on what they think

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are human pheromones,

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and they're publishing in respectable journals,

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at the basis of this,

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despite very sophisticated experiments,

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there really is no good science behind it,

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because it's based on a problem,

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which is nobody has systematically gone through

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all the odors that humans produce --

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and there are thousands of
molecules that we give off.

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We're mammals. We produce a lot of smell.

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Nobody has gone through systematically

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to work out which molecules really are pheromones.

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They've just plucked a few,

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and all these experiments are based on those,

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but there's no good evidence at all.

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Now, that's not to say

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that smell is not important to people.

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It is, and some people are real enthusiasts,

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and one of these was Napoleon.

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And famously, you may remember

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that out on the campaign trail for war,

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he wrote to his lover, Empress Josephine,

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saying, "Don't wash. I'm coming home."

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(Laughter)

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So he didn't want to lose any of her richness

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in the days before he'd get home,

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and it is still, you'll find websites

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that offer this as a major quirk.

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At the same time, though,

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we spend about as much money

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taking the smells off us

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as putting them back on in perfumes,

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and perfumes are a multi-billion-dollar business.

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So what I want to do in the rest of this talk

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is tell you about what pheromones really are,

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tell you why I think we would expect

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humans to have pheromones,

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tell you about some of the
confusions in pheromones,

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and then finally, I want to end with

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a promising avenue which shows us

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the way we ought to be going.

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So the ancient Greeks knew

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that dogs sent invisible signals between each other.

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A female dog in heat

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sent an invisible signal to male dogs

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for miles around,

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and it wasn't a sound, it was a smell.

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You could take the smell from the female dog,

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and the dogs would chase the cloth.

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But the problem for everybody

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who could see this effect

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was that you couldn't identify the molecules.

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You couldn't demonstrate it was chemical.

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The reason for that, of course,

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is that each of these animals

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produces tiny quantities,

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and in the case of the dog,

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males dogs can smell it, but we can't smell it.

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And it was only in 1959 that a German team,

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after spending 20 years in
search of these molecules,

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discovered, identified, the first pheromone,

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and this was the sex pheromone of a silk moth.

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Now, this was an inspired choice 
by Adolf Butenandt and his team,

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because he needed half a million moths

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to get enough material to do the chemical analysis.

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But he created the model

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for how you should go about pheromone analysis.

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He basically went through systematically,

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showing that only the molecule in question

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was the one that stimulated the males,

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not all the others.

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He analyzed it very carefully.

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He synthesized the molecule,

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and then tried the synthesized
molecule on the males

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and got them to respond and showed it was,

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indeed, that molecule.

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That's closing the circle.

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That's the thing which has
never been done with humans:

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nothing systematic, no real demonstration.

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With that new concept,

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we needed a new word,

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and that was the word "pheromone,"

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and it's basically transferred excitement,

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transferred between individuals,

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and since 1959, pheromones have been found

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right the way across the animal kingdom,

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in male animals, in female animals.

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It works just as well underwater

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for goldfish and lobsters.

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And almost every mammal you can think of

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has had a pheromone identified,

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and of course, an enormous number of insects.

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So we know that pheromones exist

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right the way across the animal kingdom.

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What about humans?

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Well, the first thing, of course,

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is that we're mammals,

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and mammals are smelly.

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As any dog owner can tell you,

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we smell, they smell.

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But the real reason we might think

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that humans have pheromones

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is the change that occurs as we grow up.

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The smell of a room of teenagers

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is quite different

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from the smell of a room of small children.

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What's changed? And of course, it's puberty.

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Along with the pubic hair

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and the hair in the armpits,

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new glands start to secrete in those places,

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and that's what's making the change in smell.

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If we were any other kind of mammal,

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or any other kind of animal,

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we would say,

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"That must be something to do with pheromones,"

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and we'd start looking properly.

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But there are some problems, and this is why,

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I think, people have not looked for

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pheromones so effectively in humans.

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There are, indeed, problems.

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And the first of these

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is perhaps surprising.

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It's all about culture.

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Now moths don't learn a lot

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about what is good to smell, but humans do,

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and up to the age of about four,

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any smell, no matter how rancid,

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is simply interesting.

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And I understand that the major role of parents

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is to stop kids putting their fingers in poo,

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because it's always something nice to smell.

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But gradually we learn what's not good,

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and one of the things we learn

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at the same time as what is not good

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is what is good.

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Now, the cheese behind me

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is a British, if not an English, delicacy.

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It's ripe blue Stilton.

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Liking it is incomprehensible to
people from other countries.

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Every culture has its own special food

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and national delicacy.

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If you were to come from Iceland,

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your national dish

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is deep rotted shark.

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Now, all of these things are acquired tastes,

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but they form almost a badge of identity.

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You're part of the in-group.

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The second thing is the sense of smell.

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Each of us has a unique odor world,

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in the sense that what we smell,

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we each smell a completely different world.

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Now, smell was the hardest

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of the senses to crack,

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and the Nobel Prize awarded to

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Richard Axel and Linda Buck

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was only awarded in 2004

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for their discovery of how smell works.

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It's really hard,

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but in essence, nerves from the brain

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go up into the nose

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and on these nerves exposed in the nose

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to the outside air are receptors,

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and odor molecules coming in on a sniff

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interact with these receptors,

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and if they bond, they send the nerve a signal

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which goes back into the brain.

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We don't just have one kind of receptor.

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If you're a human, you have about 400

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different kinds of receptors,

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and the brain knows what you're smelling

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because of the combination of receptors

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and nerve cells that they trigger,

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sending messages up to the brain

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in a combinatorial fashion.

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But it's a bit more complicated,

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because each of those 400

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comes in various variants,

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and depending which variant you have,

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you might smell coriander, or cilantro, that herb,

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either as something delicious and savory

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or something like soap.

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So we each have an individual world of smell,

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and that complicates anything

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when we're studying smell.

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Well, we really ought to talk about armpits,

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and I have to say that I do
have particularly good ones.

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Now, I'm not going to share them with you,

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but this is the place that most people

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have looked for pheromones.

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There is one good reason,

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which is, the great apes have armpits

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as their unique characteristic.

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The other primates have scent glands

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in other parts of the body.

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The great apes have these armpits

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full of secretory glands

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producing smells all the time,

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enormous numbers of molecules.

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When they're secreted from the glands,

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the molecules are odorless.

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They have no smell at all,

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and it's only the wonderful bacteria

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growing on the rainforest of hair

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that actually produces the smells

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that we know and love.

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And so incidentally, if you want to reduce

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the amount of smell,

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clear-cutting your armpits

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is a very effective way of reducing

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the habitat for bacteria,

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and you'll find they remain less smelly

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for much longer.

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But although we've focused on armpits,

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I think it's partly because they're the least

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embarrassing place to go and ask people for samples.

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There is actually another reason why we might not

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be looking for a universal sex pheromone there,

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and that's because 20 percent
of the world's population

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doesn't have smelly armpits like me.

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And these are people from China, Japan,

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Korea, and other parts of northeast Asia.

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They simply don't secrete those odorless precursors

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that the bacteria love to use to produce the smells

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that in an ethnocentric way we always thought of

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as characteristic of armpits.

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So it doesn't apply to 20 percent of the world.

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So what should we be doing

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in our search for human pheromones?

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I'm fairly convinced that we do have them.

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We're mammals, like everybody else

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who's a mammal, and we probably do have them.

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But what I think we should do

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is go right back to the beginning,

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and basically look all over the body.

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No matter how embarrassing,

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we need to search and go for the first time

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where no one else has dared tread.

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It's going to be difficult,

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it's going to be embarrassing, but we need to look.

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We also need to go back to the ideas

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that Butenandt used when he
was studying the silk moth.

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We need to go back and look systematically

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at all the molecules that are being produced,

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and work out which ones are really involved.

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It isn't good enough simply to pluck a couple

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and say, "They'll do."

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We have to actually demonstrate

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that they really have the effects we claim.

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There is one team that I'm
actually very impressed by.

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They're in France, and their previous success

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was identifying the rabbit mammary pheromone.

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They've turned their attention now

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to human babies and mothers.

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So this is a baby having a drink of milk

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from its mother's breast.

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Her nipple is completely hidden

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by the baby's head,

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but what you'll notice is a white droplet

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with an arrow pointing to it,

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and that's the secretion from the areolar glands.

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Now, we all have them, men and women,

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and these are the little bumps around the nipple,

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and if you're a lactating woman,

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these start to secrete.

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It's a very interesting secretion.

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What Benoist Schaal and his team developed

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was a simple test to investigate

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what the effect of this secretion might be,

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in effect, a simple bioassay.

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So this is a sleeping baby,

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and under its nose, we've put a clean glass rod.

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The baby remains sleeping,

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showing no interest at all.

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But if we go to any mother

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who is secreting from the areolar glands,

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so it's not about recognition,

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it can be from any mother,

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if we take the secretion

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and now put it under the baby's nose,

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we get a very different reaction.

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It's a connoisseur's reaction of delight,

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and it opens its mouth

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and sticks out its tongue

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and starts to suck.

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Now, since this is from any mother,

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it could really be a pheromone.

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It's not about individual recognition.

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Any mother will do.

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Now, why is this important,

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apart from being simply very interesting?

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It's because women vary

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in the number of areolar glands that they have,

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and there is a correlation between the ease

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with which babies start to suckle

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and the number of areolar glands she has.

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It appears that the more secretions she's got,

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the more likely the baby is to suckle quickly.

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If you're a mammal,

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the most dangerous time in life

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is the first few hours after birth.

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You have to get that first drink of milk,

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and if you don't get it, you won't survive.

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You'll be dead.

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Since many babies actually find it difficult

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to take that first meal,

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because they're not getting the right stimulus,

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if we could identify what that molecule was,

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and the French team are being very cautious,

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but if we could identify the molecule,

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synthesize it, it would then mean

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premature babies would be more likely to suckle,

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and every baby would have a better chance

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of survival.

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So what I want to argue is this is one example

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of where a systematic, really scientific approach

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can actually bring you a real understanding

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of pheromones.

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There could be all sorts of medical interventions.

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There could be all sorts of things

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that humans are doing with pheromones

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that we simply don't know at the moment.

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What we need to remember is pheromones

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are not just about sex.

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They're about all sorts of things to do

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with a mammal's life.

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So do go forward and do search for more.

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There's lots to find.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)