A substance
called androstenone induces afemale pig to round her haunches and flex the muscles of her pelvicfloor in anticipation of mating.
The group found that Neanderthal OR7D4 DNA was like our own — they would have been able to
smell androstenone.
No chemical elixir has been found to have effects analogous tobombykol or
androstenone in humans.
In nature,
androstenone resides in thesaliva of male pigs; in commerce it resides in a product called BoarMate, which makes sows more receptive to artificial insemination.
14 Celery, pork, and truffle mushrooms
contain androstenone, an aromatic compound that strongly influences flavor.
In the year 1931, Adolf Butenandt, a chemist collected about 15 mg
of androstenone (a hormone found in males).
Most receptors can detect more than one smell, but one, called OR7D4, enables us to detect a very specific smell
called androstenone, which is produced by pigs and is found in boar meat.
One possible explanation of this selection is that the inability to
smell androstenone was involved in the domestication of pigs by our ancestors — andostroneone makes pork from uncastrated boars taste unpleasant to people who can smell it.
One of the scents that attendees could smell during the reception was
androstenone, a steroid in boar saliva.
People's responses to
androstenone can be predicted by their OR7D4 DNA sequence, and vice versa.
Pigs were initially domesticated in Asia, where genes leading to a reduced sensitivity to
androstenone have a high frequency.
Team - member Hiroaki Matsunami at Duke University in the USA reconstructed the Denisovan OR7D4 and studied how this tiny part of a long - extinct nose responded to
androstenone.
This releases its natural pheromones, called
androstenone and androstenol, into the mouth.