If you've ever given your mate shit about how much they stink, give yourself a sniff test, cos they may well smell the same as you.
A recent study (what are these scientists up to, eh) has found that people who have the same flavour of BO are more likely to become best buds.
But before you go round sticking your nose at your mates like a dog, you should know that the sniffing out of a potential friend is largely done without us even knowing we're doing it.
The study that discovered the link between smells and sidekicks used an electric nose (eNose), which picks up on similarities in smells at a much more accurate level than we can.
Scientists running the study sampled the odour from 20 different sets of day one mates.
With the help of the eNose, the scientists discovered that the odours of friends were much closer to each other than they were to the odours of someone outside of the friendship.
Here's our attempt at making sense of the science behind the whole thing:
Body odour is one way in which your genetic make-up is displayed to the living beings around you, including other humans.
When we smell someone who smells like us, we recognise them as being similar.
So, our caveman brain takes over and tells us we should look after this person because if they succeed, it means the world is safer for people like us.
Y’know, stench in numbers.
The leader of the study told IFLScience they plan on taking the fragrance = friends theory a step further, by changing someone’s smell and seeing if that will affect who they wanna be buddies with.
We’ve got a few people in mind who we wouldn’t mind chucking in a lab, changing the way they smell, and going off to make some new friends.
