This book is about the evolution of the sense of smell, from its bacterial origin 3.4 billion years ago, to today's modern, sophisticated humans with an insatiable appetite for perfumes and fragrances. It explains how smell works and how animals sense the environment. The relationship between sex and smell drives much of animal behaviour, and the significance of the human loss of the vomeronasal organ — a part of the sense of smell in animals that responds to sex smells — is identified as a seminal event in the making of humankind.
Humans are far more than animals, however, and Adam's Nose explores incense and perfumes, as well as the odour imagery in art, literature and poetry. It is written for readers interested in what makes us human, and does not presuppose a high level of scientific understanding. The text is comprehensive and provides key references to the relevant scientific literature. The book will appeal to scientists and students in a range of biological disciplines, including human evolution, anthropology, olfactory communication, animal behaviour, perfumery and aromatherapy.
“This timely book addresses a 'biological' approach distinguishing itself from the more common 'toxicological' way to view the chemicals in our environment that affect development and adult behavior, making it especially relevant to those studying endocrine disruptors.”
Professor John G Vandenbergh
North Carolina State University
“This book is an acquisition of interest for any collection supporting comparative evolutionary study.”
Choice Connect
"Thanks to Stoddart's good story telling, this book is fun to read, filled with good humor, sometimes hilarious, but always with the goal to keep up the reader's enthusiasm and ambition to get an understanding of the scientific subject, and as such is a witness of Micheal Stoddart's life-long experience as scientist and lecturer in the field."
Chemical Senses
Michael Stoddart's interest in the sense of smell started when he was conducting his PhD study on the population dynamics of the European water vole. Large paired scent glands lying on the animals' flanks waxed and waned with the rodents' reproductive cycles and when bad weather precluded fieldwork, Michael turned his attention to the structure, function and physiological control of the glands. This early interest in smell guided the direction of his future research. Over several decades he has examined how mammals use their sense of smell, how smells control social behaviour, how they modify the body's hormone levels and influence reproductive physiology.
Adam's Nose, and the Making of Humankind is Michael's fourth book on mammalian olfaction and the second on the human sense of smell. It draws on groundwork laid in his textbook The Scented Ape: the Biology and Culture of Human Odour (CUP 1990), and puts recent olfactory genetics research into the context of human evolution.
Michael is a Scot, born in Lanark and brought up near London. After leaving school he studied zoology at the University of Aberdeen where he gained BSc and PhD degrees, and later a DSc. After a post-doctoral position at the Animal Ecology Research Group in the University of Oxford he was appointed Lecturer, later Reader, in Zoology at King's College London. In 1985 he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. Using the social marsupial sugar glider as a model species he studied the endocrinological basis of scent production, and how the gliders' scent influences stress and social behaviour. He spent five years as Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of New England in New South Wales, and ten years as Chief Scientist of Australia's Antarctic program, before returning to the University of Tasmania to establish the University's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Institute.
