Smelling Fishy, or Something

Something about "Lemmie and Jomo" is reminiscent of the great vaudeville teams — Abbott & Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Weber and Fields, etc. — except that the Clevelandish father and son team never really tried to amuse. Their particular schtick was scamming the elderly, pretending to be agents of the law, while bonding over their victims bonds, or jewelry or just cash.

Aha, but even some of the elderly knew that something smelled fishy. And so Lemmie and Jomo Wilson are headed to the slammer rather than to the stage ... at least so far. Something also smelled fishy to a Pensacola, Fla., wildlife cop, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Unfortunately for an anonymous fisherman, he had taught his daughter well the lesson of telling the truth. And she did, telling Officer Clark that "daddy lied" when he assured the officer he wasn't over the limit, that his daughter had pulled in half the catch. He was fined; his daughter fine.

While "something smells" usually precedes the announcement of an offending odor or action, it should be noted that smells can be a good thing. Recently, researchers found that odor is a father-baby bond. Scientists at the Wisconsin National Primate Center found that the smell of one's own baby dampened a dad's testosterone level.

Do humans ape the behavior? It seems likely (at least nothing smells fishy about the research.)