Behavioral Ecology Vol. 15 No. 4: 579-584
Behavioral Ecology vol. 15 no. 4 © International Society for Behavioral Ecology 2004; all rights reserved
Attractiveness of women's body odors over the menstrual cycle: the role of oral contraceptives and receiver sex
a Department of Biological and Environmental Science, P.O. Box 35, FIN-40014, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, b Department of Mental Health and Alcohol Research, National Public Health Institute, P.O. Box 719, FIN-00101, Helsinki, Finland, c Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, FIN-40351, Jyväskylä, Finland, and d Department of Biology, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA
Address correspondence to S. Kuukasjärvi. E-mail: sepelius{at}st.jyu.fi
It is a long held assumption that women have concealed ovulation, which means that men do not know when women's menstrual cycles are in their most fertile phase. Recent empirical results have provided evidence that ovulation may not be totally concealed from pair-bonded males, but the generality and the mechanisms of the finding demand further study. To examine the possible adaptive value of the phenomenon, it is necessary to study whether the ability to detect ovulation is confined to males. We studied these questions in an experiment in which male and female raters rated the sexual attractiveness and intensity of T-shirts' odors worn by 42 women using oral contraceptives (pill users) and by 39 women without oral contraceptives (nonusers). Males rated the sexual attractiveness of nonusers highest at midcycle. However, female raters showed only a nonsignificant trend for this relationship. Neither sex rated attractiveness of the odors of pill users according to their menstrual cycle. The results indicate that men can use olfactory cues to distinguish between ovulating and nonovulating women. Furthermore, the contrasting results between pill users and nonusers may indicate that oral contraceptives demolish the cyclic attractiveness of odors. Together, these findings give more basis for the study of the role of odors in human sexual behavior.
Key words: body odor, concealed ovulation, Homo sapiens, human, oral contraceptives, reproductive status, sexual selection.
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