A woman's highly attuned smell radar help her select a mate

Women may be better at sniffing out biologically relevant information from underarm sweat, a US study suggests.

Dr Leslie Knapp, an expert in biological anthropology at the University of Cambridge, said there were good evolutionary reasons why a woman's ability to detect body odours should be more acute, as it could literally be an effective way to sniff out a suitable mate

She said: "Women perhaps need to be more discriminating when they choose who to mate with to produce offspring, as they invest more than males in the reproductive process.

Dr Knapp said there was evidence that odour gave a hint about genetic make-up. She highlighted HLA genes involved in the immune response.

She said in evolutionary terms it was desirable for a women to mate with a man whose genes were different from hers, as this was likely to produce more robust offspring.