a reply to:
Nochzwei
I'll answer you, just for the sake of breaking out of this elementary school name calling.
Quest to you, why does every race smell different?
First, since there is no such thing as 'race' in biology, different 'races' do not smell different. That is not to say that there is no such thing as
race however - it is obviously a powerful sociological concept - one which seems to dominate your world view to an unhealthy extent, but that is for
you to deal with. I can only suggest that you would be a healthier person if you would learn to understand the affect it has on you.
Anyway, back to the question. Different people smell differently from each other because they have different numbers of apocrine glands (sweat
glands). Odor producing bacteria feed on the sweat produced by the apocrine glands. The sweat you produce, the more bacteria you have eating it, the
more odor you have coming off of you. The food you eat also plays a role, but we'll ignore that for the moment.
The number of sweat glands you have is determined by the same mechanism that determines what color eyes you have, or your blood type, or whether you
are colorblind, or the color of your skin, or the shape of your nose, or the height you grow to.
Everybody has the DNA to encode for nose shape, but everyone EXPRESSES that DNA coding differently - it is called Allele Expression. Not everyone's
nose is the same shape however similar noses 'run in the family' don't they? In the same way, skin color and sweat gland count 'run in the family'.
Skin color in humans runs in a broad continuum from fair to literally black. If you were to plot every individual on the planet on that continuum, you
would indeed find clumps of folks around a few 'popular' shades. One of those shades would be dark skinned. If you were to pick one individual out
from that dark skinned clump there is no way you could tell by skin color if that individual was of African, or Subcontinent Indian, or Indigenous
Australian, or Indigenous South American, or maybe even Indigenous North American. Even 'pure' Europeans have a broad variety of skin shades; there
are fair skinned Africans and there are dark skinned Scandinavians.
Other allele expression traits may give clues, broad noses maybe (nope, common all across the world), 'kinky' hair? (nope common again).
Sweat gland count is likewise controlled by allele expression. On average, people with ancestral origins in East Asia have fewer sweat glands than
other ancestral populations. The key is "ON AVERAGE". Some Asians have lots of sweat glands, some have relatively few. Some Africans have lots of
sweat glands, some have relatively few. Some Europeans have lots of sweat glands, some have relatively few. Some Indigenous Australians have lots of
sweat glands, some have relatively few. Some Indigenous Americans have lots of sweat glands, some have relatively few.
The AVERAGE varies from ancestral background to ancestral background in exactly the same way that nose shape varies from family to family. Within a
particular ancestral background, the sweat gland count varies from the average in the same way that nose shapes follow in a family.
Just as kids don't always "have their father's nose" some Chinese actually sweat a lot and some Europeans don't sweat very much at all.
So your demand that we go talk to a 'perfume maker' to prove that races smell different if followed up would come down to the answer that the market
for antiperspirant isn't as big in China as it is in Europe.
Then the bit that we ignored at the start, diet, comes into it as well. Folks with a lot of garlic in their diet have different smelling sweat (and
breath) than those with little garlic for example. Different
markets then will have different 'favorite' scents in their antiperspirant and
their perfumes. Again, nothing to do with imaginary DNA defined races.
edit on 3/3/2016 by rnaa because: typo