That's the attraction of pheromone-spiked scents, which have an odorless aroma that is supposed to make a person irresistible. And despite the limited evidence about whether you can actually get sex-appeal from a bottle, many are buying these newest variations on the love potions of old. About the column . Powerful stimulant Pheromones are odorless chemicals, produced and secreted by animals, that stimulate one or more behavioral responses from other creatures of the same species. In the popular imagination, this means sex, though pheromones serve many other functions as well, like signaling alarm or marking trails and territories.
Pheromones can be very potent and have a very powerful influence on animal behavior.
For example, some male moths have such a sensitivity to pheromones that they can detect a sexually available female moth five miles upwind. The most common commercial use of pheromones has not been in perfumes, however, but in traps to catch insect pests harmful to crops. Attracted by the scent of a synthetic pheromone in a trap, the unsuspecting insect wings or crawls its way to an intimate liaison, only to find itself captured instead. Pheromones are also released into the air to cause sexual confusion among undesirable creatures, so much so that the pests are unable to find a mate. But while scientists have been able to find pheromones in a wide variety of species, until recently there was no conclusive proof for the existence of human pheromones.