Daily Smart Fact #15: Too tired for the hanky panky, ladies? Just start crying to dampen the mood.

Key Takeaway: A new study indicates that the smell of women’s tears considerably dampens men’s sexual desires.

I stumbled upon this little ditty because I was scouring the interwebs for some interesting articles and found an article titled “Can a Virgin Give Birth” and I was like “wha?” which led to a related article about how women may have physically evolved to avoid rape (I may write on this topic some other time) which eventually led to this article from Businessweek: “Women’s Tears Tell Men to Back Off“.

Anyway, I was fascinated by all articles, although I did find some areas that I don’t agree with…but that’s for another time.

A team of scientists from Israel ran a series of experiments that led them to to conclude that the smell of women’s tears greatly dampen’s a man’s sexual arousal.

• Women are less sexually attractive – in the first experiment, 24 male participants smelled women’s tears as well as odorless saline solution. After smelling the women’s tears, they found pictures of women’s faces less sexually appealing after sniffing the tears than after sniffing the saline solution.
• Lower brain activity in regions that typically show arousal – in the last experiment, “MRI brain images of 16 men shown sexually arousing pictures and movies indicated that those who sniffed tears beforehand had lower activity in brain regions that typically show activity during arousal.”

Similar studies have not been done with men or children’s tears. I speculate that children’s tears heighten women’s nurturing region of the brain while the smell of men’s tears probably has the same effect in dampening sexual desires.  But who knows? Maybe the smell of men’s tears signal to women that the man is sensitive and caring, therefore a great potential lifemate?

Any scientists out there game to study that one?