Saliva! There are so many molecules that make up your saliva. Did you know? Saliva has all sorts of enzymes for helping with digestion, and many may be from bacteria, not our glands! [1] (Apparently, studying the saliva is sometimes called “salivaomics,” and there are some cool research here, like using saliva as an indicator for pancreatic, oral, and breast cancer [2]. But generally, compounds in the saliva fall into 2 categories: digestive or protective. I think this is cool since they’re opposites.)
Saliva may even have pheromones (chemical signals that influence social behavior). For example, male pigs emit androgen in their saliva that make female pigs more receptive for mating. The original paper that describes this says that “the compound has an unpleasant urine-like odour [3].”… Obviously, we find smelling saliva to be gross. But we have androgen in our saliva too! [4]
The use of pheromones in humans is actually controversial, but if we use them, then their effects are thought to be very subtle. Our ability to detect pheromones is believed to have dramatically decreased ~23 million years ago, as primates started to rely more on vision [5]. Some people think that mating behavior in birds focuses on visual aesthetics for similar reasons, because they don’t use pheromones as much either. Anyway, most mammals seem to care a lot more about smell than looks… and drool can be attractive.
[1] PMID: 22292826
[2] PMID: 25762866
[3] PMID: 5167342
[4] PMID: 23717389
[5] PMID: 12826614
Originally posted on Instagram September 21, 2019
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