The Smell Test? 'View' Co-host Sunny Hostin Claims Gay People 'Have a Nose for Each Other'

Did you know that gay men have 'scent attraction?'

Such is the contention of The View cohost Sunny Hostin who suggested that theory on Monday's episode, reports EW.com.

"Research," she said, "found that gay men have different scent attraction" and that "homosexual people have a nose for each other."

EW continues: "She further elaborated, saying that gay people 'can actually smell under their arms and, in a blindfold test, can tell which person is gay and which person isn't.'"

An incredulous Goldberg responded: "I know too many gay people that say my gaydar is down."

Hostin did not specify the research she mentioned, but the New York Times did cover a 2005 experiment in which Swedish researchers found differences in the way cis homosexual and cis heterosexual men process scent in the brain.

"The new research may open the way to studying human pheromones, as well as the biological basis of sexual preference. Pheromones, chemicals emitted by one individual to evoke some behavior in another of the same species, are known to govern sexual activity in animals, but experts differ as to what role, if any, they play in making humans sexually attractive to one another," wrote the Times in May, 2005.

The study was reported in the issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Ivanka Savic and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

"The two chemicals in the study were a testosterone derivative produced in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound in women's urine, both of which have long been suspected of being pheromones," reported the Times.

What the Swedish doctors found was the two chemicals activated the brain in a quite different way from ordinary scents.

The Times continued: "The estrogen-like compound, though it activated the usual smell-related regions in women, lighted up the hypothalamus in men. This is a region in the central base of the brain that governs sexual behavior and, through its control of the pituitary gland lying just beneath it, the hormonal state of the body."

"The male sweat chemical, on the other hand, did just the opposite; it activated mostly the hypothalamus in women and the smell-related regions in men. The two chemicals seemed to be leading a double life, playing the role of odor with one sex and of pheromone with another."

When the Swedish researchers repeated the experiment with a group of gay men (a third group), the "gay men responded to the two chemicals in the same way as did women, Dr. Savic reports, as if the hypothalamus's response is determined not by biological sex but by the owner's sexual orientation."

Dr. Savic added that the researchers also studied gay women but at the time, the data were "somewhat complicated" and was not ready for publication.