You're more likely to become friends with someone who smells like you

The person is Alice Klein.

Experiments show that people with similar body odors are more likely to befriend each other.

When we first meet other people, we experience an immediate strong click that makes us feel as if we have already been friends for a long time.

She wondered if this might have something to do with the fact that we subconsciously sniff each other on meeting by lifting our hand to our nose after shaking someone's hand.

A group of 20 pairs of same-sex, non-romantic friends said they clicked immediately on their first meeting.

An electronic nose was used to sniff out t-shirts that had been worn by the participants. The nose found that the smell of the body was similar between the friend pairs and the random pairs.

A group of 25 independent adults reported that the friend pairs smelled similar to each other.

17 people who had never met before were recruited and given an electronic nose to analyse their body odors. Each person played a game with other people of the same sex.

The results were the same as before, the pairs that smelled like each other were more likely to click.

According to research, we tend to become friends with people who are similar to us, such as age, ethnicity, education, religion, physical appearance, personality and values.

Dogs that sniff each other's rear ends when they meet in a park are examples of mammals using smell to decide who is friend or foe.

Heterosexual people seem to be attracted to people who smell different to them. One study found that women were more attracted to the odors of men with different immune genes because their offspring would have stronger immune systems.

Science Advances was published in the journal.

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