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What a little (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate can do
Physiology & Behavior 87 (2006) 641 – 642
Book review
What a little (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate can do Tristam D. Wyatt, Pheromones and animal behavior, Communication by smell and taste, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN: 0521485266, 408 pages Consider the following natural experiment. John, a college sophomore, lives in an old though large off campus house with nine roommates (imagine a decaying brick fraternity house). On the floor of the home's laundry room are ten dirty though otherwise identical tee-shirts, (granted a bit unlikely, but it seems the salesrep giving away promotional tee-shirts with a credit card signup had made a housecall). Each shirt was worn by a single member of the household and each discarded at the same time (ok, more implausible, but they started drinking beer, everyone got hot and disrobed said shirts simultaneously). A few days pass. Now, John has a date in ten minutes and this is the best shirt that he owns (these occurrences not doubtful at all). Can John pick out his own tee-shirt from the pile of ten based solely on its smell? As Tristan Wyatt makes clear in his abundantly exampled though somewhat enigmatically titled book, Pheromones and Animal Behavior, Communication by Smell and Taste, we live in a very different sensory world from our neighbors, the felines, rodents, amphibians, and insects with whom we co-habit our planet. For most sub-human species, the chemical senses (particularly olfaction) are primary avenues of communication. Animals sniff their way around the world for semiochemicals, molecules which tell them instant, essential, and at times, life threatening information about their immediate environment. These chemical cues may be broadly defined as pheromones though typically pheromones are thought of as molecules perceived by only the vomeronasal organ, a sensory system that is distinct from taste and olfaction (this broader definition leads to a somewhat unorthodox though amusing notion of gustatory pheromones). Animals smell (with both olfactory and vomeronasal systems) and occasionally taste their friends and foes to determine such fundamental information as kin recognition, sexual compatibility, and territory. We, on the other hand, typically reserve such activities for the more mundane-identifying rotten food in the refrigerator, for example. To humans, smell has become passé. We actually conspire to conceal any archaic primitive method of communication our auxiliary odors could produce with baths and perfumes. And we navigate our surroundings rather well without them. Imagine our need to smell our way home. Imagine if we emitted odors to communicate our alarm or rage. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2006.01.003
Well, other animals do. Messages by chemicals are exceptionally varied in their method and purpose. A conspicuous strength of this book is to bring to the forefront the importance of such communication avenues among animals through its judicious and expository use of illustration. Examples pervade in both an interpretive and historical fashion. Some, such as the intricate social organization of insect colonies, are well known. In fact, these achievements deserve veneration. Pheromones added to pieces of dirt provide enough of a descriptive architectural algorithm to allow termites to build mounds of such height and complexity (replete with an air ventilation system) to provide genuine ponder. Other examples might be assumed. The importance of chemical communication for the hapless naked mole rat, which lives underground with almost non-existent eyes, is not difficult to imagine. But some surprises are to be found. For example, (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate seems itself a rather mundane molecule until one considers it attracts both the Asian elephant and the moth (some 140 species) to their respective mates. And other examples are just flat out interesting. Minnows, rapidly retreating from their wounded kin, do so not in fear of its bloodied, mortalized appearance but due to release of hypoxanthine 3-N-oxide. Or consider the recipe bees devised to bake a hornet, surrounding their invading predator in aggregate in response to an alarm pheromone and subsequently literally cooking him (or her) to death by their cumulate body heat. Further, we might consider that if someone is talking, someone else, for their own gain, will want to listen. Indeed, examples of easedropping and propaganda, not so different from our wiretaps or identity thefts, abound. Predators illicitly intercept chemical messages of their prey to their advantage. Slave making ants produce and release the alarm pheromones of their soon-to-be captive prey to spread confusion and disperse their defenders as they raid their nests and capture pupae, which eventually emerge from the slave-maker's nest, indentured from birth. My goodness, what the proper titration of a mixture of decyl, dodecyl, and tetradecyl acetates can accomplish. Well researched, discursive, comprehensive in the behavioral assessment of chemical communication, this book is fit for any, the inquisitive graduate student, the researcher branching into a new area, or anyone whose knowledge of chemical communication is an amalgam of long forgotten undergraduate biology courses and PBS science shows. The book might only be improved by a better description of molecular advancements in the field, such as the receptors mediating these behaviors. And the somewhat insect-o-centric bent of this book shouldn't be
642
Book review
misinterpreted as the predilection of the author, but rather the state of the field. The book concludes with an apt description of our limited, sometimes imagined world of chemical communication. As one might expect, the human pheromonal world is enigmatic. Suggestions that we can use pheromonal cues for mate selection, for example, has been hotly debated, imagined, hoped for, criticized. Products, though lacking in scientific basis, have entered the marketplace. Odors that reduce weight, or reduce the perception of weight, aromas to help find a mate, or exclude a mate, scents that make you prettier, or happier, or richer, thinner, and more powerful, are both on the market and, well, asking a lot in credibility. There is some agreement that humans do possess a vestigial vomeronasal organ, no more than a small blind end sac, though researchers can't seem to agree about its neural innervation. Unconnected to the brain, it would seem of little use. And though no peer reviewed publication accepts the ability of pheromonal communications (in the narrow definition) to arouse our sexual motivations, other classic pheromonal communication among humans may occur. Women, living in
closed quarters, experience menstrual synchrony through apparently odorless auxiliary secretions. Body odors may be a diagnostic for human disease — the anile breath of lung cancer or the freshly baked brown bread odor of typhoid. There is even data that humans can recognize their own odor or that of a spouse. In a tee-shirt test, about a third of individuals could correctly identify their own tee shirt by smell out of a choice of ten. Our friend John, however, was among the ungifted. He not only chose the wrong tee-shirt, but lead his date, one of the gifted third, on a chemical communication route to one of his roommates, whom she eventually married. My, what a few chemicals can accomplish. Scott Herness College of Dentistry, The Ohio State University, 305 W. 12th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210 E-mail address: [email protected]. 22 August 2005
Book review
What a little (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate can do Tristam D. Wyatt, Pheromones and animal behavior, Communication by smell and taste, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN: 0521485266, 408 pages Consider the following natural experiment. John, a college sophomore, lives in an old though large off campus house with nine roommates (imagine a decaying brick fraternity house). On the floor of the home's laundry room are ten dirty though otherwise identical tee-shirts, (granted a bit unlikely, but it seems the salesrep giving away promotional tee-shirts with a credit card signup had made a housecall). Each shirt was worn by a single member of the household and each discarded at the same time (ok, more implausible, but they started drinking beer, everyone got hot and disrobed said shirts simultaneously). A few days pass. Now, John has a date in ten minutes and this is the best shirt that he owns (these occurrences not doubtful at all). Can John pick out his own tee-shirt from the pile of ten based solely on its smell? As Tristan Wyatt makes clear in his abundantly exampled though somewhat enigmatically titled book, Pheromones and Animal Behavior, Communication by Smell and Taste, we live in a very different sensory world from our neighbors, the felines, rodents, amphibians, and insects with whom we co-habit our planet. For most sub-human species, the chemical senses (particularly olfaction) are primary avenues of communication. Animals sniff their way around the world for semiochemicals, molecules which tell them instant, essential, and at times, life threatening information about their immediate environment. These chemical cues may be broadly defined as pheromones though typically pheromones are thought of as molecules perceived by only the vomeronasal organ, a sensory system that is distinct from taste and olfaction (this broader definition leads to a somewhat unorthodox though amusing notion of gustatory pheromones). Animals smell (with both olfactory and vomeronasal systems) and occasionally taste their friends and foes to determine such fundamental information as kin recognition, sexual compatibility, and territory. We, on the other hand, typically reserve such activities for the more mundane-identifying rotten food in the refrigerator, for example. To humans, smell has become passé. We actually conspire to conceal any archaic primitive method of communication our auxiliary odors could produce with baths and perfumes. And we navigate our surroundings rather well without them. Imagine our need to smell our way home. Imagine if we emitted odors to communicate our alarm or rage. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2006.01.003
Well, other animals do. Messages by chemicals are exceptionally varied in their method and purpose. A conspicuous strength of this book is to bring to the forefront the importance of such communication avenues among animals through its judicious and expository use of illustration. Examples pervade in both an interpretive and historical fashion. Some, such as the intricate social organization of insect colonies, are well known. In fact, these achievements deserve veneration. Pheromones added to pieces of dirt provide enough of a descriptive architectural algorithm to allow termites to build mounds of such height and complexity (replete with an air ventilation system) to provide genuine ponder. Other examples might be assumed. The importance of chemical communication for the hapless naked mole rat, which lives underground with almost non-existent eyes, is not difficult to imagine. But some surprises are to be found. For example, (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate seems itself a rather mundane molecule until one considers it attracts both the Asian elephant and the moth (some 140 species) to their respective mates. And other examples are just flat out interesting. Minnows, rapidly retreating from their wounded kin, do so not in fear of its bloodied, mortalized appearance but due to release of hypoxanthine 3-N-oxide. Or consider the recipe bees devised to bake a hornet, surrounding their invading predator in aggregate in response to an alarm pheromone and subsequently literally cooking him (or her) to death by their cumulate body heat. Further, we might consider that if someone is talking, someone else, for their own gain, will want to listen. Indeed, examples of easedropping and propaganda, not so different from our wiretaps or identity thefts, abound. Predators illicitly intercept chemical messages of their prey to their advantage. Slave making ants produce and release the alarm pheromones of their soon-to-be captive prey to spread confusion and disperse their defenders as they raid their nests and capture pupae, which eventually emerge from the slave-maker's nest, indentured from birth. My goodness, what the proper titration of a mixture of decyl, dodecyl, and tetradecyl acetates can accomplish. Well researched, discursive, comprehensive in the behavioral assessment of chemical communication, this book is fit for any, the inquisitive graduate student, the researcher branching into a new area, or anyone whose knowledge of chemical communication is an amalgam of long forgotten undergraduate biology courses and PBS science shows. The book might only be improved by a better description of molecular advancements in the field, such as the receptors mediating these behaviors. And the somewhat insect-o-centric bent of this book shouldn't be
642
Book review
misinterpreted as the predilection of the author, but rather the state of the field. The book concludes with an apt description of our limited, sometimes imagined world of chemical communication. As one might expect, the human pheromonal world is enigmatic. Suggestions that we can use pheromonal cues for mate selection, for example, has been hotly debated, imagined, hoped for, criticized. Products, though lacking in scientific basis, have entered the marketplace. Odors that reduce weight, or reduce the perception of weight, aromas to help find a mate, or exclude a mate, scents that make you prettier, or happier, or richer, thinner, and more powerful, are both on the market and, well, asking a lot in credibility. There is some agreement that humans do possess a vestigial vomeronasal organ, no more than a small blind end sac, though researchers can't seem to agree about its neural innervation. Unconnected to the brain, it would seem of little use. And though no peer reviewed publication accepts the ability of pheromonal communications (in the narrow definition) to arouse our sexual motivations, other classic pheromonal communication among humans may occur. Women, living in
closed quarters, experience menstrual synchrony through apparently odorless auxiliary secretions. Body odors may be a diagnostic for human disease — the anile breath of lung cancer or the freshly baked brown bread odor of typhoid. There is even data that humans can recognize their own odor or that of a spouse. In a tee-shirt test, about a third of individuals could correctly identify their own tee shirt by smell out of a choice of ten. Our friend John, however, was among the ungifted. He not only chose the wrong tee-shirt, but lead his date, one of the gifted third, on a chemical communication route to one of his roommates, whom she eventually married. My, what a few chemicals can accomplish. Scott Herness College of Dentistry, The Ohio State University, 305 W. 12th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210 E-mail address: [email protected]. 22 August 2005