Women may be better at sniffing out biologically relevant information from underarm sweat, a US study suggests.

美国一项研究显示，女性通过腋下气味识别生物性相关信息的能力很可能更强。

Researchers found it was difficult to mask underarm odour when a woman was doing thesmelling, but quite easy to do so when it was a man.

研究人员发现，用其它气味来蒙蔽女性对腋下气味的识别是比较困难的。相比之下，男性则更好蒙骗。

They speculate that a woman's highly attuned smell radar might help her select a mate.

研究人员由此猜测，女性敏锐的嗅觉可能有助于她们选择适合自己的伴侣。

The study, by Philadelphia's Monell Center, appears in Flavour and Fragrance Journal.

由费城蒙尼奥研究中心组织的这项研究成果已经在《香料与香味杂志》上发表。

In the study, women and men rated the strength of underarm odours, both alone and in conjunction with various fragrances.

参与试验的女性和男性分别用鼻子去闻两组腋下气味，一组是独立的腋下气味，另一组是腋下气味与其它多种香味混合而成的气味。

The fragrances were selected to test their ability to block underarm odour through a method known as olfactory cross-adaptation.

研究人员利用嗅觉交叉适应的方法来测试他们辨别腋下气味的能力。

This occurs when the nose adapts to one odour, and then also becomes less sensitive to a second odour.

采用这种测试方法是因为一旦鼻子对第一种气味适应之后，它对第二种气味的判断灵敏度就减弱了。

Sniffed alone, the underarm odours smelled equally strong to men and women.
当男女在闻独立腋下气味的时候，男女的辨别能力旗鼓相当。

But when fragrance was introduced, only two of 32 scents successfully blocked underarm odour when women were doing the smelling.

但是当腋下气味中混合了其它香味的时候，32种气味中只有两种腋下混合气味让女性无法成功识别。

In contrast, 19 fragrances significantly reduced the strength of underarm odour for men.

与之相比，19种腋下混合气味成功蒙骗了男性的鼻子。

Lead researcher Dr Charles Wysocki, a behavioural neuroscientist, said: "Taken together, our studies indicate that human sweat conveys information that is of particular importance to females.

研究小组的首席研究员、行为神经科学家查尔斯·维索斯基博士表示，综合实验结果，人类汗腺分泌的气味所传达的信息对于女性尤为重要。

Not only were women better smellers than men, but male odours were harder to block than female odours.

不仅女性的嗅觉比男性敏锐，而且男性的体味比女性的更难隔离。

Underarm odours from the two sexes did not differ in how strong they smelled. However 19% of the fragrances successfully reduced the strength of male underarm odour, compared to over 50% for the female equivalent.

男女腋下体味的强度其实并无差异。但是，男性香水能有效地减弱男性腋下19%的气味，而女性香水则能掩盖超过50%的体味。

Dr Leslie Knapp, an expert in biological anthropology at the University of Cambridge, said there were good evolutionary reasons why a woman's ability to detect body odours should be more acute, as it could literally be an effective way to sniff out a suitable mate.

剑桥大学生物人类学专家莱斯利·纳普博士表示，女性辨别体味的能力之所以更强是因为进化的原因，因为这样女性就可以更有效地闻出适合自己的伴侣。

She said: "Women perhaps need to be more discriminating when they choose who to mate with to produce offspring, as they invest more than males in the reproductive process.

她说：“女性可能在选择与之生育后代的伴侣时需要更有效地识别能力，所以她们在繁衍过程中具备了优于男性的某种能力。”

"Men don't need to be so choosy, they have lots of sperm, and can reproduce with lots of females, but once a woman reproduces with a partner she is tied up for nine months."

“男性不需要如此得谨慎，他们有许许多多的精子，他们可以和许多女性生育后代。而一旦女性怀孕，她们需要经历9个月的忍耐。”

Dr Knapp said there was evidence that odour gave a hint about genetic make-up. She highlighted HLA genes involved in the immune response.

纳普博士说，有证据表明，体味同时也会发出一个人基因组成的信号。她强调，人类白细胞抗原基因就与免疫功能相关。

She said in evolutionary terms it was desirable for a women to mate with a man whose genes were different from hers, as this was likely to produce more robust offspring.

她表示，从进化的角度来说，女性若能和与自己基因组合不同的男性结合是很好的选择，因为那样他们的下一代很可能更健康。