According to a new report by the University of Stirling, some female brains can recognise a good genetic match just by copping a whiff.

Psychological research in the UK has suggested that the specific under-arm pot-pourri of a man contains a number of key triggers for heterosexual female brains, a taste which stays constant over time and reveals a surprising amount about whoever emits it.

For the study; six male stinkers were asked to wear a cotton t-shirt to bed for two nights, while avoiding smoky rooms, garlic and smelly cheese in the two days prior, as well as not using deodorant, aftershave or perfumed soap.

The British scientists then asked 63 heterosexual women to sniff the t-shirts and rate them from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all pleasant” and 7 an “extremely pleasant” under-arm sample.

The ladies were then polled with the question; “Is this how you would like your long-term partner to smell?” before ranking the shirts in order. Three months later the process was repeated with the same male smell-makers but different female sniffers, and fresh shirts.

“Women scored the six male odours consistently across the two tests,” the researchers found.

“Our results… lend weight to the assumption that body odour constitutes a meaningful cue of quality that can be used in individual assessment during human interactions,” they concluded.

The striking findings are further detailed in the latest edition of the Flavour and Fragrance Journal.