The Last Word On Nothing

The wild boars of Berlin get a bad rap. Last week one of these beasts was mistaken for a lioness, triggering emergency alerts and a two-day armed search. During the pandemic, another boar stole the laptop bag of a nude sunbather, forcing an absurdly ridiculous birthday suit chase. When I lived in Berlin, I was once stuck in traffic because an entire boar family had decided to relax in the middle of a busy intersection. Some boars steal groceries left unattended in open car trunks or birthday cake at garden parties.

I’d argue Berlin’s abundant boars are actually an untapped resource: A few years ago, I used them as part of a gonzo science project. My friends called it a midlife crisis, but I called it the Boar Witch Project.

I probably need to start from the beginning. For a time, my obsession was the world of online human pheromone peddlers. These are typically men on the straight bro-incel spectrum who promise in creepy videos that a spritz or two of their wares will instantly attract any woman, and lead to a “homerun.”

Like much related to romance, the question of whether human sex pheromones exist is… complicated. Researchers have found enticing clues that human body odors may play a role in seduction, but a scientifically-validated product remains elusive. This hasn’t stopped online entrepreneurs from jumping the gun: There’s a bounty of pheromone colognes for purchase online with perilously evocative names like Sacred Cherry, Raw Chemistry, and Dragon’s Blood.

Some cologne entrepreneurs deploy pseudoscientific claims about their wares, namely that the ingredients androstenone and androstenol are human pheromones. This is nonsense (and for a full explanation of why, read this). But amusingly these molecules do help catalyze sex for wild boars and pigs. 

Male swine produce androstenone and androstenol in their saliva. When a horny male pig or boar breathes heavily on a female in heat, she will smell the molecules, spin around, and then lift her rump in an ostentatious demonstration that she is ready to start a family. The chemicals are so successful for getting female pigs in the mood – or at least in the right position – that pig farmers use them to ease artificial insemination. The spray is aptly named Boar Mate.

The human dating scene is already dystopian. It’s just as well that scientists haven’t identified a human sex pheromone with instantaneous results on par with boars.

But what would happen, I wondered, if some Berlin dude had gotten duped into wearing pheromone cologne? Would one of the abundant, local female wild boars heed his siren call? This called for An Experiment.

I’d buy a stuffed boar, hang it in the forested areas around Berlin and spritz it with “human” pheromone cologne. Then I’d wait for amorous wild boars to come-a-calling.

An analytical chemist friend helped me test my collection of human pheromone colognes. (Please don’t judge: we’ve all had late-night online shopping sprees.) We found that some products claiming to contain androstenone or androstenol did indeed house the stuff. These chemicals are… potent. They smell like a raunchy locker room overgrown by fungi. Which is why many of the cologne suppliers mix the funky pig pheromones with other more traditional perfume scents, so that the dank odor is partially masked with floral notes, citrus, musk and spice. As a result, the pheromone colognes are like a potent aromatic flare, the kind you send out in romantic desperation.

I felt a boar stuffy would rock this concoction. But I had procurement problem. I could not find a life-sized boar stuffed animal to use as a decoy. So I settled on a hand-me-down anteater stuffy, sourced from a Facebook parenting group, that was the same size and shape as a boar.

On a late afternoon in December (boar mating season!), I tied my anteater to a tree in a secluded grove near a pile of boar poop and doused it with Raw Chemistry. In the falling light, the anteater seemed definitely coy. I texted eerie photos of my setup to my besties and then put on snowpants.

I just needed the ability to see in the dark. Luckily this logistical hurdle was rectified by my masseuse, a committed fan of nighttime paintball. He lent me his night-vision goggles. Another friend, a biologist who studies nocturnal animals, lent me his motion-activated camera to digitally record any visitors to my set-up.

I lasted three hours. At 9:12 pm exactly, I had finished all my snacks, was extremely cold, and my phone battery was nearly dead. Also: peeing is a hassle when you’re in a snowsuit. My training in chemistry did not prepare me for the badass endurance requirements of a field biologist.

So I trudged out of the forest, caught an S-bahn and showed up at a friend’s party to debrief. Meanwhile the motion-activated camera stayed at the ready, capturing visits from foxes, mice, birds, deer, a frog, a dog… and finally a boar!

…behold the boar…

Whether the boar had been drawn by the pheromones floating through the air, or whether it was curious about the arrival of a hanging anteater in the hood, I do not know. The boar approached. It sniffed. It inspected, and I dare say it looked charmed by the anteater. But to my chagrin it did not do the mating twirl-and-rump-lift dance.

Of course, there are all sorts of reasons I probably didn’t manage to fool a female boar into getting fully in the mood. An anteater stuffy is not a living, breathing boar. Also: the pheromone colognes didn’t just contain androstenone and androstenol, they contained other perfume ingredients that do not smell like male boar. Any self-respecting sow would probably be perplexed by the aromatic interlopers.

But I’ve never forgotten that curious boar. As I witnessed Berlin’s recent lioness-on-the-loose drama, I got to fantasizing that the swine responsible for impersonating the lioness might actually be eking out revenge for having once been duped by a hanging anteater.

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Sarah Everts spent a decade reporting from Berlin before she moved to Ottawa to teach science journalism at Carleton University. She is the author of The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration (Norton, 2021). The visuals are all hers.