London: Do you know that the handshake -- limp or firm -- can sniff people out? According to a fascinating study, people use the touch of a handshake to sample and sniff chemical signals that could explain why the greeting evolved in the first place.

"Your handshake conveys subliminal social cues," said professor Noam Sobel, chair of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. It is well known that we emit odours that influence the behaviour and perception of others but unlike other mammals "we do not sample those odours from each other overtly," the findings showed.