With Valentine’s Day approaching, love can grow from simple gestures, stolen kisses and — pheromones?

As part of the Coolidge Corner Theatre Science on Screen series, pheromones were in the air after the screening of steamy 1981 film Body Heat and a lecture about the science of sexuality by Boston University College of Arts and Sciences professor Michael Baum.

“We wanted to have somebody who could not only talk about the psychology and sociology of attraction, but we wanted someone to talk about science,” Science of Screen marketing consultant Cheryl White said.

Baum’s presentation covered his research on sexual attraction in animals, primarily ferrets, focusing on the importance of smell, hormones and chemical reactions within the brain. Although he said it was difficult to perform similar studies on people, he presented a few examples for which the results were similar.

“Neural processing of body odors controls sexual attraction in animals,” he said.

The theater has been running the Science on Screen program since 2005, co-presented by the Museum of Science, Boston and New Scientist magazines. It presents a science-themed film or documentary each month with a guest speaker before each presentation, and February’s theme was the science of attraction, White said.

Body Heat chronicles the sexually-charged affair of lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) and married woman Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner).

Baum related his research to an early scene in the movie in which Ned breaks into Matty’s house to see her.

“He walks right in and they have sex right there on the floor,” Baum said. “These ferrets do the very same thing.”

Brookline resident Linda Imber, who attended a previous Science on Screen presentation, said she would have preferred a different movie for the discussion, which she enjoyed.

“I think it’s really interesting to study the science of sex,” Imber said.

Baum said androstadien is a male sweat component that attracts heterosexual females and homosexual males with a “very robust pheromone response.” He discussed how heat and sweat in the movie contributed to the fictional sexual tension.

“There are certain relationships that are smell-sense attack,” attendee Samantha Gluck, a Somerville resident, said. “That was definitely connected to an animal instinct.”

Gluck said she was able to see connections between the lecture and the film, adding, though, she would have preferred a more psychological approach.

“Sometimes we do show a typical science film and sometimes we show something where the connection is not so obvious,” White said.