OFK
Olfactory Recognition of Offspring
Class: II - Sexual Selection
EPA Total Score: 3 /100
MacFarlane, A. (1975). Olfaction in the development of social preferences in the human neonate, in CIBA Foundation Symposium No. 33: Parent-infant interaction (pp. 103-117). Amsterdam: Associated Scientific Publishers.
Abstract: Olfactory perception in the human neonate has been largely ignored. The present experiments examine the possibility that neonates can use smell to locate a food source and that they can differentiate between their own mother and another mother on the basis of smell. Head-turning to breast pads was used in perference tests. Although the neonate did not appear to be able to use smell to localize a food source, significantly more babies spent more time turning towards their own mother's breast pad than towards a clean breast pad at five days of age. By six days of age babies were showing a differential response between their own mother's breast pad and another mother's breast pad, although this differentiation was not present at two days of age.
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Supporting Evidence is evidence that suggests that this trait is an Evolved Psychological Adaptation (EPA) - i.e., that it has been shaped by natural selection to solve a particular adaptive problem.
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Challenging Evidence is evidence that suggests that this trait is not an EPA - e.g., that it is a product of cultural learning or genetic drift, or maybe it does not exist at all. However over each line of evidence for a description.