Someone might be able to deceive men with a way to use perfume to cover body odor, but not for women. Because the new study shows women are more sensitive to body odors than men.

U.S. researchers find difficult to cover up the smell of one’s armpits when the women who sniffed, but quite easy to do when the man who sniffed. The study was conducted by Philadelphia’s Monell Center and published in the Flavour and Fragrance Journal.

In the study of men and women will assess the strength of the smell of armpits that appears, either naturally or after covered by a variety of fragrances. Fragrances, was chosen to test one’s ability to inhibit the smell that comes through the olfactory cross-adaptation method (olfactory cross adaptation.)

Participants were asked to sniff bottles containing the body odor of volunteer men and women. Unknown men and women equally well in detecting natural body odor.But when the body odor was mixed with perfume, then the ability of women to sniff the smell of the body much better.

“These results might explain why it’s so hard to block the perception of body odor in women. This is because the biological factors, women have a higher sensitivity to odors than men,” said Dr. Charles Wysocki, a behavioral neurologist, as quoted by BBC News, Thursday (11/18/2010).

Meanwhile, Dr Leslie Knapp, an expert in biological anthropology from the University of Cambridge said that there are evolutionary reasons that make women’s ability to sniff the smell of bodies better than men. Because this can be an effective way to sniff the smell of couples who would fit with it.

“Women may be more discriminating when choosing a partner to marry and produce offspring, because women invest more than men in the reproductive process,” he said.

Dr. Knapp said there is evidence to suggest that body odor can give clues about the genetic component, one of which HLA genes involved in immune response. This makes women want to choose men with different genes to produce stronger offspring.

In addition, according to a study by Swiss researchers found that women’s body odor is more similar to the smell of onion or lemon, while the male body odor is more similar to the smell of cheese.