Insects are not like people, because they have antennae instead of noses, and because they use pheromones and we don't. Still, it's always good to remember that when it comes to the chemosensory world, there's always a difference between males and females:
The differing olfactory worlds of female and male silk moths
Jan 2024, phys.org
Male moths live in a completely different olfactory world to their female counterparts. For example, the antennae of male silk moths are highly specialized to detect female sex pheromones like bombykol and bombykal, while females cannot even smell their own pheromones.
Bombykol attracts and bombykal deters, for males.
For females, they can't smell any of that. Instead they smell isovaleric acid and benzaldehyde, which are in silkworm feces, which can be found on mulberry trees, since they are the only trees where silk worms live, and they're also where silk moths want to lay eggs.
via Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg: Females smell differently: characteristics and significance of the most common olfactory sensilla of female silkmoths, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2578
Image credit: AI Art - Adam and Eve According to the Bible - 2025
Study suggests an 'odor sensor' may explain male and female differences in blood pressure
Mar 2024, phys.org
Blood pressure in premenopausal human and mouse females is typically 10 points lower in both diastolic and systolic pressure than in males. Some studies suggest the difference may be caused by sex hormones, but the biological basis for the variation is not entirely clear.Olfactory receptors are found all over the body, in lots of places that are not only in our nose, like in our kidneys for example (and on the surface of our skin but I don't have the science for that, only personal experience). Anyway, they've now found an olfactory receptor lining blood vessel walls of a part of the kidney that releases a blood pressure hormone called renin.Olfacotry receptors each have their own gene, so it's easy to look at a population and select people with mutations of this gene, which they did. These people, women, who didn't have the gene also had blood pressure levels just like men.
via Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Queen Mary University of London: Jiaojiao Xu et al, An Evolutionarily Conserved Olfactory Receptor is Required for Sex Differences in Blood Pressure, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk1487.
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