Men Sense ‘Scent of a Woman’: ‘Could love truly be in the air?
Researchers in Texas believe men become especially attuned–and
attracted to–female body odors during the most fertile stage of the
menstrual cycle.

“These findings raise serious doubts about conventional scientific
wisdom that human female ovulation is concealed…and that men cannot detect when women are
ovulating,” according to Drs. Devendra Singh and P. Matthew Bronstad, psychologist researchers
at the University of Texas in Austin.’ Reuters Health

Update: A reader asked what’s new about this news, given the well-known phenomenon of women’s menstrual cycles synchronizing when they live together. Several things. First, menstrual synchronization may be because of subliminal awareness of menstruation, not ovulation. That’s not so surprising, given that menstruation provides external, overt or subliminal, clues. Second, this study shows not only subliminal awareness, but that, as with our primate forebears’ behavior around oestrus, men find women more sexually attractive at precisely the time they are most fertile. As such, it is of evolutionary biological interest.