Washington: Tests have shown that a rat may be able to identify your kith and kin by the similarities in body odour.
Erin Ables and colleagues at the University of Chicago familiarised rats with a human volunteer's odour, then tested the length of their response to novel odour.
The rats investigated odour from people who were genetically related to the volunteer for a shorter time than those who were unrelated.
This supports the idea that closely related humans share similar odour, and that the odour have a genetic basis.
Previous work suggests that humans can also distinguish between the odour of their relatives and non-relatives.
Ables speculates that this ability may help us avoid behaviour such as inbreeding.
She presented her work at the Animal Behavior Society meeting last week in Snowbird, Utah.
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