Of Pig Spit and Armpits
The Smell of Beauty
By Duke Heath
At the dawn of man, there was no make-up, no cologne and no thick
wallets to attract the chicks. There was no speech for sexy talk,
no perfume, and no blues tunes to help get your woman in the mood
for love. How was an early Troglodyte gigolo to let the women know
that, not only could he walk the walk, but that he also carried
a big stick? The answer is simple. He did not have to let them know
anything. They could smell it on him. In fact they sought him out.
Our Trog gigolo was exuding a powerful chemical from his armpits
that the young, sexy, curvaceous female Trogs could not resist.
The chemical our young Troglodyte stud was emitting, which caused
the women to cast their morals aside and submit their bodies to
unnatural contortions, was a powerful sexual attractant called a
sex pheromone. A sex pheromone is a steroid similar to testosterone,
the odor of which strongly attracts the opposite sex of the same
species.
The first pheromone ever identified was a powerful sexual attractant
for silkworm moths called bombykol. A nubile sexy female silk worm
moth releases ten billionths of a gram of pheromone and draws to
her every male for miles around. It has been calculated that if
a single female moth were to release all the bombykol in her sac
in a single spray, all at once, she could, theoretically, immediately
attract a trillion males. In one experiment, designed to show the
power of pheromones, several male rats were isolated in individual
cubicles by a small tether. One of these rats had previously proven
himself to be the alpha male. These cubicles were, themselves, located
inside a larger cubicle. When female rats were introduced into the
larger cubicle, they had no idea which of the smaller cubicles held
the alpha male. It was thought that, through trial and error, they
would eventually determine which was the alpha male. When the females
were actually released into the larger cubicle, they showed absolutely
no hesitation and went directly to the alpha male's cubicle and
submitted for mounting. It was obvious that the alpha male was emitting
a very powerful sexual pheromone, and it was this pheromone which
was attracting, not some of, but all of the ladies. But what was
causing this pheromone emission?
Without discussing the procedure with the alpha male rat, the procedure
was repeated exactly as the first experiment in every detail save
one. The alpha male was castrated before the introduction of the
females. This procedure stopped his testosterone production. The
results were phenomenal. Not one of the female rats went into his
cubicle even though it was the same cubicle with the same rat in
the same location as in the first experiment. Instead they all went
to another male's cubicle, which had been number two in the hierarchy
behind the alpha male. Without testosterone, the alpha male no longer
produced the sexual pheromone which was attracting to the females.
A third experiment was then run after injecting the castrated male
with testosterone. When the ladies were introduced, once again they
all went directly to the castrated alpha male's cubicle. The testosterone
was obviously controlling pheromone production.
The chief sexual pheromone of a pig is 5-alpha-androsterol-chemically
similar to testosterone. It's mixed in with the boar's saliva as
testosterone is mixed in with the spit of men. When a sow in heat
smells this steroid on a slobbering boar, she immediately adopts
a "Come here big boy, I am all yours," posture.
The French culinary delight, truffles, an under ground fungus, produces
exactly the same steroid, only in higher concentrations than in
boar's saliva. This is why pigs are used to find and dig up truffles.
The sows go crazy when they smell the steroid and begin digging
furiously looking for a mate. The truffles were using this pheromone,
not to attract a mate, but to cause animals that respond to this
pheromone to dig them up and spread them across the earth.
Where else can we find this amazing sex attractant? In fact, 5-alpha-androsterol
is copiously produced in the underarm sweat of men. It is the odor
of love, the smell of beauty, the scent of Eros which was helping
our young Troglodyte score. Long ago, before perfume and deodorant,
even before speech itself, this steroid played a huge role in bringing
man and woman together. A testament of the power of its smell is
that, even today, the average woman's nose is about the exact height
of her mate's armpit