Can a dirty T-Shirt help you find love?
If you're sick of writing up witty bios on dating websites or taking dozens of selfies to find your perfect profile pic, you might want to try out this new website that claims to help you find love by smelling a dirty t-shirt.
Tega Brain, an artist and a teacher and Sam Lavigne, an editor and a researcher at New York University, started a project called Smell Dating, a website that matches people through the sense of smell alone.
Dubbed "the first mail odor dating service" on its website, Smell Dating works by first sending users a t-shirt that they wear for three days and three nights without putting on deodorant or perfume. Then return the used T-shirt to the company so they can cut it up to send to potential mates. The sender also receives swatches of shirts worn by others to smell and determine which scent they like. If two people like one another's smell, Smell Dating provides contact information for both parties.
Participation in the project costs $25 to cover the cost of shipping and handling.
The website states: "At Smell Dating we understand the metrics of compatibility are chemical; connection is a matter of intercourse not interface. The Internet has replaced fleshy experience with flat apparitions, avatars and painstakingly curated profile pics. Smell Dating closes digital distance by restoring your molecular intuition. Our members make connections via deeply intuitive cues, perfected in the ancient laboratory of human evolution. Surrender yourself to a poignant experience of body odor."
Dr. Charles J. Wysocki, Member Emeritus at Monell Chemical Senses Center who was not involved in the project, told CBS News that research has shown you can tell certain things about a person based on their scent: gender, sexual orientation, age.
The scent of smell has also been used in mate selection. Studies in mice have found that female mice choose males whose immune cells differ from their own to confer stronger immunity on their progeny. Studies in humans have shown that women prefer the scent of men who are genetically different from them, too.
Smell Dating aims to take that research to the next level. But will it work?
Wysocki was hesitant to say that the service could be 100 percent effective because he did not know how the project leaders determined which scents to send to a potential mate. "The potential is there," he told CBS News. "But more research needs to be done."