The odour of amity: how you smell can predict friendships

Two strangers with similar body odour are more likely to become friends, a study by scientists in Israel has found. It shows that despite being an underappreciated sense, smell can play an important role in how people form and maintain social bonds.

‘People constantly, but mostly subconsciously, sniff themselves and others,’ says Inbal Ravreby from the Weizmann Institute of Science, who led the study together with Noam Sobel. While other mammals use smell to decide who is friend or foe, ‘the function of this in humans is, to a large extent, unknown’, Ravreby explains.