Pheromones come from two Greek words namely pherein which means to transport and hormone which means to stimulate. Thus, Pheromone is a chemical change or factor that stimulates and elicits reaction or response of social aspect in an individual. This word is also introduced in 1959 by Peter Karlson and Martin Lucher.
Earlier research called them as alarm pheromones, food trail pheromones, sex pheromones, and many others that affect behavior or physiology of an individual. These stimuli are therefore transported outside the body and the result is a direct change in behavior of the one receiving the stimuli.
Pheromones are also known to be used by insects and are well documented for. Some vertebrates and plants also used it to communicate with each other. Pheromones are also differentiated into types. These are aggregation, alarm, epideictic, releaser, signal, primer, territorial, trail, information, sex and many more.
Aggregation pheromones are a pheromone that triggers the survival instinct of an individual. This is also released when choosing a mate and when under attack from a mob while Alarm pheromones initiates your flight or fight instinct when being in danger or being attacked. Epideictic Pheromones are pheromones produce by laying insects to warn others of their territory. Releaser pheromones can cause behavioral change in the receiver like attraction.
Signal pheromones, from the name itself gives short signals of impending danger. Primer Pheromones also sets of change in behavior. Trail pheromones are use as a guide or to mark certain path ways. Information Pheromones are use to learn identity and territory of animals. Sex pheromones are pheromones that indicate availability of female species for procreation purposes.
Types of pheromones differ depending on the effect they provide to specific factors like behaviors. It can also depend on the need of an individual in certain situations or places. When I needed a product to boost my confidence, I tried Chikara cologne. But when it comes to the effect to humans there’s still a long standing debate about this even if some studies were done to learn the effects of pheromones to the social life of humans.
