Is your smell the ultimate dating shortcut?

I’ve watched two daughters go through the online dating process – with great success, by the way. But it can involve a lot of dead ends. Which is why geneticist Brittany Barreto co-founded a company called Pheramor which matches people … according to what they smell like.

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This, of course, is how many living things choose mates. Dogs especially. But wisely, Barreto decided not to mimic that process. Rather Pheramor’s dating service indirectly matches pheromones by collecting saliva samples.

“Yes, there is some strangeness in sending your spit in the mail, but I also think putting your credit card into the internet was really weird, but now everybody does Amazon,” Barreto recently told CBS.

So you expectorate into a tube. Pheramor then takes that saliva and analyzes it for markers that control pheromone production, and you get back a list of the people who smell like you. Which, according to Barreto, is how love at first sight works. You’re actually sensing your future lover’s pheromones.

And I know all you old-fashioned people will say ‘Dave, where’s the romance in that?’ But when you think about it — what is a kiss? It’s a saliva exchange. It’s just a real time comparison of oral environments. It’s like chewing each other’s gum.

And yet when Ed Sheeran sings about saliva saying, “Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love,” it’s very sweet.

Roses are red, violets are blue
My saliva has told me, I’m destined for you.

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