Rats can sniff you out just as dogs

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.