I'm trying to convince my wife that we need a dog. I grew up with dogs, and am comfortable with their ways. If we're visiting someone's home, and I suddenly experience a sensation of humid warmth, and I look down and see that my right arm has disappeared up to the elbow inside the mouth of a dog the size of a medium horse, I am not alarmed. I know that this is simply how a large, friendly dog says: "Greetings! You have a pleasing salty taste!" I respond by telling the dog that he is a GOOD BOY and pounding him with hearty blows, blows that would flatten a cat like a hairy pancake, but which only make the dog like me more. He likes me so much that he goes and gets his Special Toy.
This is something that used to be a recognizable object--a stuffed animal, a basketball, a Federal Express driver--but has long since been converted, through countless hours of hard work on the dog's part, into a random wad of filth. "GIVE ME THAT!" I shout, grabbing an end of the Special Toy. This pleases the dog: It confirms his belief that his Special Toy is the most desirable item in the universe, more desirable even than the corpse of a squirrel. For several seconds we fight for this prize, the dog whipping his head side to side like a crazed windshield wiper. Finally, I yank the Special Toy free and hold it aloft. The dog watches it with laser-beam concentration, waiting for me to throw it ... waiting ... waiting ... until finally I cock my arm, and, with a quick motion I ...
... fake a throw. I'm still holding the Special Toy. But WHOOOSH, the dog has launched himself across the room, reaching a velocity of 75 miles per hour before WHAM he slams headfirst into the wall at the far end of the room. This stimulates the M&M-size clump of nerve cells that serves as a dog's brain to form a thought: The Special Toy is not here! The dog whirls, sees the toy in my hand and races back across the room. Just as he reaches me, I cock my arm and ...
... fake another throw. WHOOOSH! WHAM! The fake works again! It will always work. I can keep faking throws until the dog has punched a dog-shaped hole completely through the far wall, and the dog will STILL sprint back to me, believing that THIS time I'm going to throw the toy. This is one reason why I love dogs.
My wife is less impressed. She fails to see the appeal of an animal that appears to be less intelligent than its own parasites. Oh, I've tried to explain the advantages of having a dog. For example:
A DOG IS ALWAYS READY. It doesn't matter for what: Dogs are just ready. If you leave your car window open, the dog will leap into the car and sit there for hours. The dog knows that sometimes the car just starts moving, and you have to be ready! Usually the dog will sit in the driver's seat, in case (You never know!) the dog is called upon to steer.
A DOG IS VIGILANT. One time, on a movie set, I watched a small dog walk past a line of six metal light stands. When the dog came to the sixth light stand--which was EXACTLY the same as the other five light stands--the dog stopped and began barking furiously at it. Clearly the dog had detected some hostile intent in this particular light stand, something that we humans, with our inferior senses, were not aware of. We humans were thinking: "What's WRONG with that dog?" Whereas the light stand was thinking: "Whew! That was close!" These are just a couple of examples of the practical benefits provided by dogs.
I have tried pointing them out to my wife, but she doesn't see it. This is why, in our house, we have fish. They're nice fish but they're not a whole lot of fun. Although they are excellent drivers.
The twinkle in his eye, his swagger, that sexy smile--all are clear signs he's in the mood.
And, at least subconsciously, a woman can also tell by the scent of his sweat, according to new research.
Scientists have long debated whether humans, like animals, use chemical signals called pheromones to communicate sexual interest to potential mates. Problem is, the effects of pheromones are thought to be subconscious--meaning that if we do communicate using them, we sure don't know it. It's also hard to know what these pheromones might be and how we sense them, so researchers understand little about them.
But if human pheromones are going to be anywhere, they're going to be in sweat, right? Denise Chen, a psychologist at Rice University in Houston, and her colleagues devised an experiment to compare how women respond to different forms of male sweat--sweat produced in everyday situations versus that produced when a man is turned on.
The researchers speculated that if humans do produce and respond to sweat pheromones, then a woman should respond to a guy's sexual sweat differently than she does to his normal sweat.
Chen and her colleagues asked 20 heterosexual guys to stop wearing deodorant and scented products for a few days. Then they told the men to put small pads in their armpits as they watched pornographic videos and became aroused (the researchers confirmed, using electrodes, that the images did the job). Later, the guys were asked to exchange those pads for fresh pads to collect the sweat they produced when they weren't aroused.
Then the researchers recruited 19 brave women to smell the men's pads while undergoing brain scans.
The investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique that reveals the brain regions a person is using at any given time--even if their brain activity is subconscious.
Sure enough, the women's brains responded very differently depending on which sweat they sniffed. (And no, none of them passed out.) The sexual sweat, but not the normal sweat, activated the right orbitofrontal cortex and the right fusiform cortex, brain areas that help us recognize emotions and perceive things, respectively. Both regions are in the right hemisphere, which is generally involved in smell, social response, and emotion.
The findings bolster the idea that humans do communicate via subconscious chemical signals, notes Chen in her study, which was published in the Dec. 31 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Our sexual intentions, in other words, may be a lot clearer than we ever intended them to be. That crush you have on your co-worker? She may already know--at least subconsciously.
