Study Suggests We Want To Eat Our Babies Because They Smell As Good As Drugs

shutterstock_68744230__1380015027_74.134.205.46Show of hands here! How many of you have ever threatened to eat a baby or pretended to eat a baby or kissed a baby’s feet by loudly exclaiming NOM NOM NOM? OH, pretty much ALL of you? That’s what I thought. Well, according to Canadian (Home of the beloved dayglo orange KD) researchers we all do this because babies excite a woman the same way that drugs excite a drug addict. So I have NO idea what is up with men who do the same thing. From The Daily Mail:

A newborn’s odour is a chemical communication between mother and child and sparks the same reward circuits in the brain as when eating something nice – or having sex.

Researchers say when a woman feels like ‘gobbling up’ a baby placed in her arms – even if it’s not hers – it’s a natural biological reaction linked to maternal functions.

 

Holding a baby sparks the same REWARD CIRCUITS! Like eating a cupcake or having sex with no small child banging on your door demanding cupcakes!

Dr Johannes Frasnelli, of Montreal University, said: ‘The olfactory – thus non-verbal and non-visual – chemical signals for communication between mother and child are intense

.

‘What we’ve shown for the first time is the odour of newborns – which is part of these signals – activates the neurological reward circuit in mothers.

‘These circuits may especially be activated when you eat while being very hungry, but also in a craving addict receiving his drug. It is in fact the sating of desire.’

Dr Frasnelli and colleagues presented two groups of 15 women – one that had given birth within six weeks and the other who had never had babies – with the pyjama scents of newborns while scanning their brains.

Although the babies were not their own the pleasure chemical dopamine shot up on the images of the mothers in the caudate nucleus compared to the non-mothers, says the study published in Frontiers in Psychology.

It’s strange to me that dopamine didn’t shoot up in all women, because I don’t think only women who have given birth want to eat babies. I think it’s a universal thing, especially if the baby is adorable and smells really good and doesn’t have a dirty diaper. Especially if the baby is wearing a little hat with ears on it. I demand they re-do this whole study and try again using actual babies with hats with ears on them and then see who in the group tries to eat the baby’s feet or pretends to eat their tummies while the baby giggles. I bet the results are universal.

 

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