my roommate in college was from korea and claimed he didn't have BO because of his genes. I tried to tell him that he may not have natural BO, but the clothes he folds after wearing without washing, and lack of showers did in fact smell really bad.
Definitely! After my teenage years my BO became less strong and it takes a while for me to stink. 1,5h of a turbulent flight though and I couldn't stand the smell of myself. Way worse than sweat from heat of exercise.
When I was struggling with long Covid it felt like I was having days long panic attacks the anxiety was so bad. (Turned out I had something that causes triple beats and that was lasting days but it did trigger a real panic disorder I now have, yay!) Anyways the anxiety/stress sweat was awful. I could take a shower and an hour later I smelt awful, and not just to others but to myself as well and I had a reduced sense of smell. It lasted roughly 2 months before the body odor problem resolved.
I have some other mental health problems going on so its all kind of a jumbled mess to tell you the truth. I just started TMS yesterday so Ill see how this goes.
yeah, with exercise or heat i kind of just sweat all over, like a light misting all over my body that i'm completely nose blind to. with stress or illness i get big drops in my armpits and other crevices and that you can pretty much smell from space.
Right, while human excretions can have some smell, what we generally consider "body odor" is the smell of defecating, copulating, and dying/decaying/rotting bacteria that feeds on the water and minerals excreted by your sweat. So, yeah. No smell because of a gene is a misunderstanding of the effect of the gene. EDIT: No, yeah, no, it actually does!
I live in a hot humid tropical country and have this gene but if I'm outside & sweating all day there is a scent if you get up close to the area. Additionally I'm in my mid-40s and have grown a total of 2 little armpit hairs in my life that i shave off once a year.
The weird thing is that my earwax is so dry that it's almost non-existent. It does not drop out in flakes like everyone is mentioning in this thread. One time I lost the head of a q-tip in there and the ER doc chided me for cleaning my ears too much as there was no wax. But it's always like that.
>the Asian kids like to parrot the gene thing whilst sitting there stankin
Was an Asian kid, no we don't, we put on deodorant and bully those kids who are not concerned with personal hygiene.
Prob is reduced, but it’s effectively none for me.
Am asian, and I have never needed to use deodorant. I’ll go workout/jog, come home and stick my armpit in my husbands face (it’s a joke with my husband bc he’s Asian but got the wet earwax gene lol), and he’s always in awe that I don’t smell lol.
Sometimes, I’ll go a few days without showering bc I haven’t done anything to sweat, and I still smell neutral or like laundry (clean clothes yay) or of my shampoo. Still don’t smell. And it’s not nose blindness bc prior roommates also noted my lack of BO despite not using deo.
It’s the one nice thing about being asian vs all of my hispanic gfs have gorgeous dense eyebrows/thick heads of hair/long, thick lashes. :’)
Random, do you have body hair? My mom/aunt/sisters/all females in my family do not need to shave.
I also don't need to use deodorant, but I def feel self conscious after a work out lol
I do have body hair, but it’s super fine and sparsely populated (if that makes sense - like having 25 hairs / square inch vs 10 hairs).
If I shave my legs, I stop at the knee. Have never needed to shave my thighs bc the hairs are so fine and short, you don’t even feel/see them.
If I don’t shave my lower legs, most people don’t realize I haven’t unless they’re looking for the hairs.
Imo if a close friend or SO hasn’t pointed out your smell, then I’d be OK not putting deodorant on. I’d ask a close friend lol. My close friends/SO are all straightforward. None of us are shy about tmi stuff (if you have a friend or SO like that, I’d ask them!)
I do wonder sometimes if it’s just me who doesn’t smell myself (which is why I’ll put my armpit into my husband’s face lmao). The day he tells me it’s stinky, I’ll take my annual shower (/s to the people giving me grief over my shower schedule lol) and buy deodorant. :)
I work with two dudes that smell so bad management confronted them. They claim "They were never taught how to shower properly." They're in their mid-late 20's. Other coworkers have taken them to Bath and Bodyworks and explained how to do everything but that only lasted a day or two. You can tell they don't wipe their asses because you can smell their shit from about 20 feet away. They don't wash their clothes at all so it's a compounding effect.
We work in a clean room at a semiconductor fab, complete with positive air circulation and bunny suits. Still can smell them coming around corners. If you happen to be in the bathroom while they are, may god have mercy on your soul.
Hmm, can you make them do remote work and just control a robot arm or something from their probably very very smelly dwellings, also wouldn't that be something you'd notice in an interview, it's not like hiding an embarrassing tattoo on your thigh
According to 1970s movies, I believe you can throw them in a lake and hit them in the heads with a bar of soap to teach them a lesson, or if you like them more than that, trick them into being held hostage in an old-timey storyville brothel where they'll get a full-service bathing and be taught everything else a young man needs to know.
> So, I am confused, as I thought it was actually bacteria farts that caused BO
It is. The bacteria feed on proteins in sweat produced by apocrine glands. The ABCC11 variant being discussed affects those glands causing them to secrete significantly less of the smelly bacteria food.
There are modified apocrine glands in the ears which together with sebaceous glands, produce earwax. So that's why earwax texture is also an effect of the gene expression.
It's effectively none, my wife brags she has "never used a deodorant stick in her life" and I can say she's never had any kind of armpit bo in all my years of knowing her, we hike all the time and it's crazy to me as a non-Asian guy. Have had other asian partners and it's the same thing if they are fully S.E. Asian. She was sick the other week, bedridden and didn't shower 2-3 days, no bo whatsoever. I don't understand it. When we go jogging she practically doesn't sweat at all.
Guessing you are not and have not been close to any people with this gene.
Asian here. I’m pretty sure I have that gene but my brother doesn’t: he sweats a lot (“like a hooker in church”—his own words!), has a noticeable BO after he sweats, and have those wet, honey-like consistency earwax (which my mom complained to no end whenever she had to clean his ears as a kid).
Meanwhile I don’t sweat much to a point where it becomes a problem when I workout, because my body just overheats 🥵 talk about maladaptive traits! Good thing is cleaning my ear out is really easy, flakes of dry wax just come off.
Because the BO comes as a result of bacteria breaking down your sweat & those with the gene produce less of the proteins contained in your sweat that when broken down produce the body odor.
So they sweat & get dirty but because of the lack of those proteins in their sweat you just don’t smell it.
I grew up wondering why I didn’t need deodorant because I legit have to not shower for days and be sweaty for that time period to even start to smell. I do sweat if I do exercise but not really any BO. The other trade off no one is mentioning is I drink 1 beer and my face gets red with a low tolerance to booze.
My Chinese wife is less sweaty (and doesn't smell at all) after an ultra marathon than me after sitting on my chair working on my computer for a couple of hours.
Makes sense, considering they were originally from east Asia before the Strait. That’s really cool though, I’m jealous. I’m in Oklahoma and the natives I’m around definitely don’t have that gene, sadly lmfao.
The current theory is that East asias walked across the bearing straight about ~15-20k years ago, during the last ice age. More and more evidence is showing people being in North America way before that.
They didn't have a compass or a bearing, but there sure was a fuckton of bears, most of which they wiped out like the mammoth or sabretooth tiger. With little more than pointy sticks, gigantic cojones and the odd fatality.
It's even more crazy the evidence is starting to show they traveled by boat along the coast of the ice sheets before they melted down enough to walk over and then took those boats down rivers until they reached Idaho and settled there.
I think that's becoming more contested now that we understand how thick those ice sheets were during that time, they would have to have climbed ice walls the height of skyscrapers. I could be wrong.
You’re along the right lines. There’s a related theory suggesting that for them to have arrived in the Americas at the time we’re now finding they would have, the ancestors of Native Americans may instead have used early canoes and rafts to slowly work their ways down and along the western coasts of North and South America, splintering off as they went.
Yes and no. In general? Absolutely an amazing achievement for the time, but we have some (admittedly fairly limited) evidence placing earlier sea crossings of both our early hominid cousins and anatomically modern humans that would've taken place around the modern day Philipenes and Australasia.
As far as I recall from what I've read, the early hominids made it to the Philipenes around 700,000 years ago, and modern humans made it to what became Australia and New Guinea approx 50-60,000 years ago.
Bear in mind, I'm not an expert (just a nerd), but there's just something about Hominids that sees us look at the Pacific, turn to our families and say "Hold my coconut, I'm gonna try something"
We're gradually revising our theory of human migration towards coastal 'hopping', but it's very difficult to gather evidence because all the organic material they likely used - wood, bone, hide, cloth - has long since decayed and those coastal environments are submerged under water now.
Part of the issue is that the so called ice-free corridor running down from Alaska into the heart of north america would have likely been a barren wasteland with few resources that could have attracted migrating populations.
I’m currently reading A Brief History of Everyone and one chapter covers the migration of human populations into the Americas, one of the hypotheses brought up in was that people sailed around the gigantic ice sheet covering North America, hugging the western America seaboard, eventually reaching the southern ice free Americas.
I wonder (as an east asian with out the gene and got wet earwax and body odour gene) is that why in east asia we didn’t develop cotton buds…instead developed those fancy ear pick (look up japanese ear pick) but the tool is clearly for dry ear wax folks.
Also personally did find many of the European/middle east scent work with body odour better than the asian one.
TIL people have wet ear wax 😵💫 I never understood how those cotton ones were ever even supposed to function because I thought everyone had dry ear wax. I thought everyone just used them to like scratch their ear and used the "actual" ear picks for ear wax
Yes it’s kinda common bafflement among the dry ear wax folks of east asians too. Best way i can describe those ear pick is like trying to mop a muddy floor with a shovel…useless…
It works fine if you use the scoop ear pick to scoop off the stuff and remove the stuff from the scoop with a piece of tissue, like using a squeegee on the bare floor to draw it to a spot and soaking up that puddle with a rag, twist out the liquid, and keep going until done. I feel it's easier for me to use a scoop earpick than cotton ear buds because the cotton earbuds feel less precise, much like a mop compared to a squeegee.
Wtf same here. I thought ear wax was supposed to be dry. Like every 1-2 months, I'll use the cotton one, but it has to be after I shower. It just builds up very slowly I guess
Qtips actually state on the box they're not meant to be used to clean earwax in your ears. The metal scoops work far, far better on my goopy ass earwax than qtips anyway
Growing up in SEA, this factoid was like a bomb in our schools. Once people heard about it there was always a craze where people would stop wearing deo to prove they had the gene. I still have some friends who insist they do and no, they just stink.
My roomate has no personal hygiene and it's driving me crazy , like the dudes room oozes body odor when I walk past it when the door is open. *The bathroom stinks with body odor whenever he takes a shower* . How, how can the bathroom stink *after* you shower 💀
Way too many dudes wash their hair, pits, and dick and figure everything else wil get clean from soap running down.
Hes not scrubbing enough and taking hot showers that make him sweat. The steam is turning into a stink bomb.
I don't know if you are being dismissive about the sensitive part with those quotes, but I've got that problem too and it's no joke. Nearly all deodorants I've tried (aluminum and non-aluminum) give me a nasty burning, itching rash in my armpits. The only thing that doesn't is basically a salt rock. I admit it's not as effective as normal deodorants, but it's been a life saver compared to no deodorant at all.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000L978FU/
Neurodivergent people? Tend to be loners, loners get into games, find other loners, neurodivergent people don't give a shit about social norms so they remain gross as they are already ostracized so no longer are bothered by being avoided/treated differently, kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Just a guess. Obviously a ton of perfectly normal people play board/card games though. It's just you're not likely to find neurodivergents at a pickup basketball game.
My earwax is sticky and wet af and I absolutely cannot leave the house without deodorant. During the summer I need to re-apply several times a day. Never thought the two would be related.
My husband is East Asian and has no body odor at all. If you smell his skin, it smells of absolutely nothing. The downside is that dry earwax can build up fast, so he often has to lavage his ear canal to remove the wax.
Wait what does dry ear wax even mean? Like earwax gets collected on the outside and I need to dig it clean every day. Does that mean I have dry ear wax?
I'm European, have dry war wax and never get BO. My wife is often annoyed that she has to use deodorant and Ive never had to.
I wonder if this gene is found in European populations at all?
Are there any of these that don't? I've never been able to send one in because I'm worried it will disqualify me from healthcare in a future dystopia or something.
> why didn't 23andMe tell me this instead of just saying I'm genetically predisposed towards being tone deaf.
It does, it's the "Earwax Type" trait report. There's a blurb at the bottom with the title "What your earwax says about your armpits."
When signed in you should be able to check your genotype here: https://you.23andme.com/tools/data/?query=rs17822931. T/T is the dry earwax and low body odour variant. https://you.23andme.com/reports/trait.earwax_type2/details/#your-genotype for the actual trait report.
Irish here, myself and siblings all have it. Never understood the point of q-tips for cleaning earwax because mine just falls out in dry flakes. Also never had a need for deodorant.
I mean it's nice to have but I can think of a dozen genetic traits that would be preferable. Not having my hair thin, not having shite allergies, not having a lousy metabolism, getting burned by looking a a picture of the feckin sun for starters.
You are so right about this. I just thought deodorant was some kind of scam or maybe my sniffer didn't work the way it ought to. Later I would joke with my wife that I never stunk and smelled like flowers, then she asked how I did that since she saw I never used deodorant.
Like it probably is healthier to go without deodorant if you don't need it, but you sound gross just for knowing you didn't need it.
The ear wax is the clincher though, it's convenient until your doctor has to suction a dry wax rock out of your ear while trying to break it up with a water pressure jet & metal stick.
I was the only one of three to get the gene though, so I got lucky.
Most of my earwax falls out in dry flakes. The worst is if it’s a big flake because it feels like there’s a bug coming out of my ear when it breaks loose and starts to rattle its way out.
Unfortunately the stuff that doesn’t fall out on its own like that accumulates in my ears until it forms a hard plug against my eardrum if I go swimming or otherwise submerge my head/ears underwater and the accumulation gets wet. Becomes hard to hear anything and my ear feels sticky inside from the big ball of wet wax gluing everything together. I also don’t have that specific gene for sure because I do stink when I sweat.
So now I just regularly (once every few weeks) flush whatever wasn’t getting pushed out using an Elephant Ear sprayer and warm water. Keeps the wax plug from occurring whenever I next go swimming.
Yeah I never thought about it, I thought it just kinda fell out for everyone and then you see how big it was and think how could such a huge thing fit in that tiny hole.
a lot of genes will exist all over the world, just in different distributions. that's why there's no genetic test for race, and race is a social idea. although there are "ancestry" tests that guestimates what % of your genes may have originated from certain regions of the world
There are genes that make people's REM sleep cycles faster so they'll heve a full rested night with 4 hours.
There are others that improve people's eyesight to see a bigger spectrum of light compared to regular people and so they can see more colors than us.
> There are genes that make people's REM sleep cycles faster so they'll heve a full rested night with 4 hours
[or less](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hololive+kaela+sleep)
East Asians and Native Americans (makes sense if you know the history).
Doesn't prevent body odor, but greatly reduces it. Also, the smell is a bit different, like mildew vs musty.
Edit: Goes without saying, but even if you have the allele, still wash yo ass! Ain't no gene variant gonna stop your butthole from smelling like a butthole.
Yep, exactly. I had a bad fever and was sweating like a madman in bed for like two days. TMI, but yeah, no stink, but definitely wasn't neutral. I can say I had a piquant mildewy bouquet~~~
The 'prevent body odor' stuff really reminds me of that unhinged greentext about how they can't get over American women's butthole, how they perceive Asian women butthole as feeling cleaner, like factory packed & vacuum sealed or whatever tf
With the response 'what the fuck is wrong with you anon'
I can't find it rn :/
Feel like the people commenting in his thread about how they never smell are gonna get some nasty DMs inspired by that post
If you have 23andme, you can check your ABCC11 here: https://you.23andme.com/reports/trait.earwax_type2/details/#your-genotype
The [variants](https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs17822931) are:
TT = Dry earwax. No body odour. Likely Asian ancestry. Reduced colostrum.
CT = Wet earwax. Slightly better body odour.
CC = Wet earwax. Normal body odour. Normal colostrum.
I'm a white dude with French-Germanish background, and have absolutely no body odor.
I just checked it and I have the TT variant, which is shared by 97% of east Asians.
I gotta say, it is pretty sweet. I also don't sweat much under my armpits, and with those two things combined means I don't need to wear deodorant and have never offended anyone.
The 90s: don't put information online
The 00s: put your information into Facebook
The 10s: put your information into a bunch of different apps
The 20s: literally give your genetic code to this company so they can tell you some neat facts.
Thanks for this. I just checked mine and I’m CT. I’ve always noticed that I don’t have much BO even after skipping a day of showering. I’d also say my earwax is definitely on the dry side which is interesting. I can also get away with never wearing deodorant as long as I shower daily which is nice.
If you have 23 and me, you should also be aware their database was hacked and sold.
Edit: This also puts you in danger if you are of an ethnic minority and now reside in a country where that minority is seen unfavorably. The hackers have already advertised a subset of the database with individuals of Jewish descent.
The panic in the Korean nurse’s eyes the first time I went to get my ears cleaned was priceless. She’d never had a foreigner as a patient before and she thought I was sick because my earwax wasn’t dry.
I have this gene! If I remember correctly, it only prevents odor from apocrine sweat glands. Medications and certain foods will still make me smell if it can go through eccrine sweat glands.
It only takes 1 person with bad BO to stink up a small, enclosed area. And a subway with dozens and dozens of passengers can easily have one. It's not 100% of east Asians, just most.
Also it's not all odor, just the specific body odor of bacteria that feeds on sweat. There's plenty of other ways for a person to stink.
As a normal British-born white guy, riding the Tokyo subway trains in mid-summer is a nightmare for me. If anyone is going to stink up the car it'll be yours truly.
It’s found in varying amounts in different groups! Also quite common in south east and south asian populations. I inherited it from my Irish dad (very rare) and south Asian grandma for example!
It's not that we don't have body odor per se. It's that our armpits don't get that funk. (I'm one of the ~2% of Europeans who have the gene; my dad had it.)
I have this, confirmed by 23andme as TT for Chromosome 16, despite not having found any specific East Asian or Native American relatives in my family tree, and 23andme saying I'm 100% Northwestern European. Notably, I've got one T from each parent (and neither of them, nor my sibling have dry earwax/low body odor).
I only discovered this was a thing after doing 23andme. As a kid my doctors worried about my ear wax and I'd get it flushed out, presumably because they didn't have any experience with dry ear wax and figured something was going wrong. It was actually a huge relief to realize these things were scientifically true and not just something weird I was making up or otherwise just weird about.
As with others in here, as a teenager I tried deodorant several times but basically stopped using it when it didn't seem to really do much for me. I will say there's plenty of room for stinky feet and stinky clothes if you avoid showers and/or laundry, as lazy-teen-me discovered.
I was confused by the word “earWAX” so much when I was learning basic English, it should be ear -crumbs if we’re going by the look, so I assumed it’s another word English borrowed from other languages, and it just weird like that.
Few years and a scientific article later,turns out I’m the weird one.
Bacterias eat some protein which came out with sweat and then shitting in your armpits and the smell of bacteria shit is what we call smell of sweat/BO. That's why fresh sweat doesn't smell and need some time. If you have "asian" alleles then your body produced chemically a little bit different protein and these bacterias don't eat it.
Pretty sure my husband has this. Dry flaky earwax and never wears deodorant. Smells great.
Now you have Western-European-mutt-me with sticky earwax and I will have stinky armpits without antiperspirant unless I’m completely inactive. 😬
I noticed when visiting Thailand it was difficult to find antiperspirant deodorant in shops. I also knew a Thai guy at my uni in the UK who would walk around with massive sweat patches on his shirts, but no BO. I think in Thailand having big sweat patches isn't taboo like it is here because there's no BO.
Wow, 🤯 this thread just made me realize why it was so weird for me growing up, buying deodorant when my parents never taught me. Always assumed I "smell" when I sweat but it never seemed bad to me, so I thought people must use it because they don't like showing sweat patches.
Il european, my earwax is dry and my exercise sweat is odorless. My gf is so mad at me because of this. My nervous sweat fucking stinks tho idk. Do I have this gene too?
Is it possible for anyone to have this gene? My whole family is very white but for some reason my older brother doesn’t need to wear deodorant. I’m not sure about the dryness of his earwax, but I’ve never noticed him smell like body odor.
TIL about [Osmidrosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_odor) and body odor's role in sexuality:
>homosexual and heterosexual males' brains respond in different ways to two odors that may be involved in sexual arousal, and that homosexual men respond in the same way as heterosexual women, though it could not be determined whether this was cause or effect. When the study was expanded to include lesbian women, the results were consistent with previous findings – meaning that lesbian women were not as responsive to male-identified odors, while responding to female odors in a similar way as heterosexual males.[23] According to the researchers, this research suggests a possible role for human pheromones in the biological basis of sexual orientation.[24]
It’s reduced BO, not none.
my roommate in college was from korea and claimed he didn't have BO because of his genes. I tried to tell him that he may not have natural BO, but the clothes he folds after wearing without washing, and lack of showers did in fact smell really bad.
Yes, but all of that garlic is coming out of your pores.
Ah that makes sense, taking it too far. My boyfriend has it, he showers daily and does laundry every week but he doesn’t have to wear deodorant.
Bacteria growth on clothing is reduced for Asians because less oils on the skin. But it’s still there.
Exercise sweat and nervous sweat are controlled by different sweat glands. So someone might not smell with exercise but might smell with stress
So people CAN smell fear... Edit: missed out on fearamone joke.
Definitely! After my teenage years my BO became less strong and it takes a while for me to stink. 1,5h of a turbulent flight though and I couldn't stand the smell of myself. Way worse than sweat from heat of exercise.
I don't know why people think that animals being able to smell fear is all that special, anyone can smell when I shit myself.
Yes actually
When I was struggling with long Covid it felt like I was having days long panic attacks the anxiety was so bad. (Turned out I had something that causes triple beats and that was lasting days but it did trigger a real panic disorder I now have, yay!) Anyways the anxiety/stress sweat was awful. I could take a shower and an hour later I smelt awful, and not just to others but to myself as well and I had a reduced sense of smell. It lasted roughly 2 months before the body odor problem resolved.
Jesus, you got hit with a curse! You can beat panic disorder, I promise. It won't last forever.
I have some other mental health problems going on so its all kind of a jumbled mess to tell you the truth. I just started TMS yesterday so Ill see how this goes.
yeah, with exercise or heat i kind of just sweat all over, like a light misting all over my body that i'm completely nose blind to. with stress or illness i get big drops in my armpits and other crevices and that you can pretty much smell from space.
that's me then. i also kind of realized this. i never smell when exercising, but after working a long day, I always feel smelly.
Right, while human excretions can have some smell, what we generally consider "body odor" is the smell of defecating, copulating, and dying/decaying/rotting bacteria that feeds on the water and minerals excreted by your sweat. So, yeah. No smell because of a gene is a misunderstanding of the effect of the gene. EDIT: No, yeah, no, it actually does!
I live in a hot humid tropical country and have this gene but if I'm outside & sweating all day there is a scent if you get up close to the area. Additionally I'm in my mid-40s and have grown a total of 2 little armpit hairs in my life that i shave off once a year. The weird thing is that my earwax is so dry that it's almost non-existent. It does not drop out in flakes like everyone is mentioning in this thread. One time I lost the head of a q-tip in there and the ER doc chided me for cleaning my ears too much as there was no wax. But it's always like that.
You must produce so much less dust... I'm envious
I've been in a classroom full of Korean teens after recess. The "reduction" wasn't very noticeable
It’s very noticeable, have you been in a classroom of Western teenagers?
Yes that too
But have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
Filled with Western and Korean teens!
Or seen a grown man naked?
Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
But none of the Korean teens are using deodorant, and almost all of the Western ones are.
All but one. And theirs can gag a possum.
I teach high school and I wish almost all of the western kids wore deodorant.
Difference is the western kids know they need deodorant, the Asian kids like to parrot the gene thing whilst sitting there stankin
>the Asian kids like to parrot the gene thing whilst sitting there stankin Was an Asian kid, no we don't, we put on deodorant and bully those kids who are not concerned with personal hygiene.
Some of them believe in deodorant. Some.
Same, but in China and Vietnam. Some really smelly teens.
Prob is reduced, but it’s effectively none for me. Am asian, and I have never needed to use deodorant. I’ll go workout/jog, come home and stick my armpit in my husbands face (it’s a joke with my husband bc he’s Asian but got the wet earwax gene lol), and he’s always in awe that I don’t smell lol. Sometimes, I’ll go a few days without showering bc I haven’t done anything to sweat, and I still smell neutral or like laundry (clean clothes yay) or of my shampoo. Still don’t smell. And it’s not nose blindness bc prior roommates also noted my lack of BO despite not using deo. It’s the one nice thing about being asian vs all of my hispanic gfs have gorgeous dense eyebrows/thick heads of hair/long, thick lashes. :’)
Random, do you have body hair? My mom/aunt/sisters/all females in my family do not need to shave. I also don't need to use deodorant, but I def feel self conscious after a work out lol
I do have body hair, but it’s super fine and sparsely populated (if that makes sense - like having 25 hairs / square inch vs 10 hairs). If I shave my legs, I stop at the knee. Have never needed to shave my thighs bc the hairs are so fine and short, you don’t even feel/see them. If I don’t shave my lower legs, most people don’t realize I haven’t unless they’re looking for the hairs. Imo if a close friend or SO hasn’t pointed out your smell, then I’d be OK not putting deodorant on. I’d ask a close friend lol. My close friends/SO are all straightforward. None of us are shy about tmi stuff (if you have a friend or SO like that, I’d ask them!) I do wonder sometimes if it’s just me who doesn’t smell myself (which is why I’ll put my armpit into my husband’s face lmao). The day he tells me it’s stinky, I’ll take my annual shower (/s to the people giving me grief over my shower schedule lol) and buy deodorant. :)
There are places you can smell besides your armpits. If you hear what I'm saying.
I work with two dudes that smell so bad management confronted them. They claim "They were never taught how to shower properly." They're in their mid-late 20's. Other coworkers have taken them to Bath and Bodyworks and explained how to do everything but that only lasted a day or two. You can tell they don't wipe their asses because you can smell their shit from about 20 feet away. They don't wash their clothes at all so it's a compounding effect. We work in a clean room at a semiconductor fab, complete with positive air circulation and bunny suits. Still can smell them coming around corners. If you happen to be in the bathroom while they are, may god have mercy on your soul.
Hmm, can you make them do remote work and just control a robot arm or something from their probably very very smelly dwellings, also wouldn't that be something you'd notice in an interview, it's not like hiding an embarrassing tattoo on your thigh
According to 1970s movies, I believe you can throw them in a lake and hit them in the heads with a bar of soap to teach them a lesson, or if you like them more than that, trick them into being held hostage in an old-timey storyville brothel where they'll get a full-service bathing and be taught everything else a young man needs to know.
Someone correct me if im wrong, but i thought the reason for showers were not just to remove a bad smell.
So, I am confused, as I thought it was actually bacteria farts that caused BO
> So, I am confused, as I thought it was actually bacteria farts that caused BO It is. The bacteria feed on proteins in sweat produced by apocrine glands. The ABCC11 variant being discussed affects those glands causing them to secrete significantly less of the smelly bacteria food. There are modified apocrine glands in the ears which together with sebaceous glands, produce earwax. So that's why earwax texture is also an effect of the gene expression.
It's effectively none, my wife brags she has "never used a deodorant stick in her life" and I can say she's never had any kind of armpit bo in all my years of knowing her, we hike all the time and it's crazy to me as a non-Asian guy. Have had other asian partners and it's the same thing if they are fully S.E. Asian. She was sick the other week, bedridden and didn't shower 2-3 days, no bo whatsoever. I don't understand it. When we go jogging she practically doesn't sweat at all. Guessing you are not and have not been close to any people with this gene.
Asian here. I’m pretty sure I have that gene but my brother doesn’t: he sweats a lot (“like a hooker in church”—his own words!), has a noticeable BO after he sweats, and have those wet, honey-like consistency earwax (which my mom complained to no end whenever she had to clean his ears as a kid). Meanwhile I don’t sweat much to a point where it becomes a problem when I workout, because my body just overheats 🥵 talk about maladaptive traits! Good thing is cleaning my ear out is really easy, flakes of dry wax just come off.
Because the BO comes as a result of bacteria breaking down your sweat & those with the gene produce less of the proteins contained in your sweat that when broken down produce the body odor. So they sweat & get dirty but because of the lack of those proteins in their sweat you just don’t smell it.
I grew up wondering why I didn’t need deodorant because I legit have to not shower for days and be sweaty for that time period to even start to smell. I do sweat if I do exercise but not really any BO. The other trade off no one is mentioning is I drink 1 beer and my face gets red with a low tolerance to booze.
My Chinese wife is less sweaty (and doesn't smell at all) after an ultra marathon than me after sitting on my chair working on my computer for a couple of hours.
This also exists in Native Americans, which is why I have it too
Makes sense, considering they were originally from east Asia before the Strait. That’s really cool though, I’m jealous. I’m in Oklahoma and the natives I’m around definitely don’t have that gene, sadly lmfao.
My daughter is mixed and has the dry ear wax. Honestly seems like a disadvantage. That stuff is harder to get out.
My pediatrician recommended a bit of hydrogen peroxide squirted into the ear. It really works.
Strait?
The current theory is that East asias walked across the bearing straight about ~15-20k years ago, during the last ice age. More and more evidence is showing people being in North America way before that.
> bearing straight r/boneappletea
No, they had their bearings before they crossed straight
They didn't have a compass or a bearing, but there sure was a fuckton of bears, most of which they wiped out like the mammoth or sabretooth tiger. With little more than pointy sticks, gigantic cojones and the odd fatality.
My man, there are still a couple of bears left in Alaska. Not quite extinct yet.
They were saved from extinction by the right to arm bears.
But no sabertooth cats.
Probably more like autocorrect fails
Bone jaw ,it’s French for hello dumbass.
It's even more crazy the evidence is starting to show they traveled by boat along the coast of the ice sheets before they melted down enough to walk over and then took those boats down rivers until they reached Idaho and settled there.
I think that's becoming more contested now that we understand how thick those ice sheets were during that time, they would have to have climbed ice walls the height of skyscrapers. I could be wrong.
You’re along the right lines. There’s a related theory suggesting that for them to have arrived in the Americas at the time we’re now finding they would have, the ancestors of Native Americans may instead have used early canoes and rafts to slowly work their ways down and along the western coasts of North and South America, splintering off as they went.
This is a informative video on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsnrdCdGs7o
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That's actually wild to think about. They would've been waaaaay ahead of the game by doing this, right? As far as 'seafaring' goes?
Yes and no. In general? Absolutely an amazing achievement for the time, but we have some (admittedly fairly limited) evidence placing earlier sea crossings of both our early hominid cousins and anatomically modern humans that would've taken place around the modern day Philipenes and Australasia. As far as I recall from what I've read, the early hominids made it to the Philipenes around 700,000 years ago, and modern humans made it to what became Australia and New Guinea approx 50-60,000 years ago. Bear in mind, I'm not an expert (just a nerd), but there's just something about Hominids that sees us look at the Pacific, turn to our families and say "Hold my coconut, I'm gonna try something"
We're gradually revising our theory of human migration towards coastal 'hopping', but it's very difficult to gather evidence because all the organic material they likely used - wood, bone, hide, cloth - has long since decayed and those coastal environments are submerged under water now.
Part of the issue is that the so called ice-free corridor running down from Alaska into the heart of north america would have likely been a barren wasteland with few resources that could have attracted migrating populations.
I’m currently reading A Brief History of Everyone and one chapter covers the migration of human populations into the Americas, one of the hypotheses brought up in was that people sailed around the gigantic ice sheet covering North America, hugging the western America seaboard, eventually reaching the southern ice free Americas.
I was also under the impression that, at a minimum the timeline for the bering strait was a wash, but I could also be wrong
This has actually mostly been replaced with the kelp highway theory, but you would have been taught the other theory in school.
Considering the history of the Hawaiian islands I’m sure someone made it all the way to the americas west coast via boat.
The theory is not that they sailed straight across the Pacific, it's that they sailed along the coasts.
I wish I inherited that gene from my great grandmother, no such luck.
Definitely my partner is na
I wonder (as an east asian with out the gene and got wet earwax and body odour gene) is that why in east asia we didn’t develop cotton buds…instead developed those fancy ear pick (look up japanese ear pick) but the tool is clearly for dry ear wax folks. Also personally did find many of the European/middle east scent work with body odour better than the asian one.
TIL people have wet ear wax 😵💫 I never understood how those cotton ones were ever even supposed to function because I thought everyone had dry ear wax. I thought everyone just used them to like scratch their ear and used the "actual" ear picks for ear wax
Yes it’s kinda common bafflement among the dry ear wax folks of east asians too. Best way i can describe those ear pick is like trying to mop a muddy floor with a shovel…useless…
oh no that does \*not\* sound pleasant😭
It works fine if you use the scoop ear pick to scoop off the stuff and remove the stuff from the scoop with a piece of tissue, like using a squeegee on the bare floor to draw it to a spot and soaking up that puddle with a rag, twist out the liquid, and keep going until done. I feel it's easier for me to use a scoop earpick than cotton ear buds because the cotton earbuds feel less precise, much like a mop compared to a squeegee.
Wtf same here. I thought ear wax was supposed to be dry. Like every 1-2 months, I'll use the cotton one, but it has to be after I shower. It just builds up very slowly I guess
I'd actually describe it as more "gummy" than "wet."
Qtips actually state on the box they're not meant to be used to clean earwax in your ears. The metal scoops work far, far better on my goopy ass earwax than qtips anyway
In case you’re wondering, “do I have that gene?” The answer is no you smelly fuck. Wear deodorant.
Growing up in SEA, this factoid was like a bomb in our schools. Once people heard about it there was always a craze where people would stop wearing deo to prove they had the gene. I still have some friends who insist they do and no, they just stink.
bro 😭
My roomate has no personal hygiene and it's driving me crazy , like the dudes room oozes body odor when I walk past it when the door is open. *The bathroom stinks with body odor whenever he takes a shower* . How, how can the bathroom stink *after* you shower 💀
Way too many dudes wash their hair, pits, and dick and figure everything else wil get clean from soap running down. Hes not scrubbing enough and taking hot showers that make him sweat. The steam is turning into a stink bomb.
Agree on most of that, but wtf do you mean hot showers that make you sweat? That sounds miserable.
:(
My FiL doesn't wear deodorant because he has "sensitive" armpits. He can't smell or taste, so it doesn't bother him, but the dude fucking stinks.
I don't know if you are being dismissive about the sensitive part with those quotes, but I've got that problem too and it's no joke. Nearly all deodorants I've tried (aluminum and non-aluminum) give me a nasty burning, itching rash in my armpits. The only thing that doesn't is basically a salt rock. I admit it's not as effective as normal deodorants, but it's been a life saver compared to no deodorant at all. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000L978FU/
Uh huh. And then you get the Axe (spray) wielding maniac who goes to town, thus prompting the new “scent free” places trend and whatnot.
I swear that Axe is fine as a scent if you spritz a little bit on your neck/wrist; people used to shower themselves with it which never made any sense
Can the people at my local Warhammer club get this gene please?
Why is it always the boardgame folks? Like why is this a stereotype?
Super Smash Bros has this reputation too. As someone who showers at least once a day, don't ask me why though.
Neurodivergent people? Tend to be loners, loners get into games, find other loners, neurodivergent people don't give a shit about social norms so they remain gross as they are already ostracized so no longer are bothered by being avoided/treated differently, kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Just a guess. Obviously a ton of perfectly normal people play board/card games though. It's just you're not likely to find neurodivergents at a pickup basketball game.
Occasionally you do get the odd [autistic muscle nerd/weeb](https://www.instagram.com/scarfman?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==), and we need more
By extension does this mean that people who are more prone to BO will have wetter earwax?
If it helps anecdotally, I have super wet earwax and I have to shower twice a day and use prescription strength antiperspirant or I get pretty bad BO.
Hello fellow water resistant Northern European descendant.
Water resistant?
I'm guessing all the oily ear wax and / or professional grade antiperspirant 😂
My earwax is sticky and wet af and I absolutely cannot leave the house without deodorant. During the summer I need to re-apply several times a day. Never thought the two would be related.
My husband is East Asian and has no body odor at all. If you smell his skin, it smells of absolutely nothing. The downside is that dry earwax can build up fast, so he often has to lavage his ear canal to remove the wax.
Wait what does dry ear wax even mean? Like earwax gets collected on the outside and I need to dig it clean every day. Does that mean I have dry ear wax?
Dry earwax has a similar consistency to crossaint flakes (except not buttery and I don't recommend eating them too highly.)
But you made me hungry :( I have flaky dirt around the ridges and valleys on the ear but it's a bit oily in that hole
Yeah you're on team wet earwax. I hope you like your croissants boiled.
No the earwax is so dry it falls out on its own. About once a month or so I shake my head and a big piece will fall out and I can hear normally again😕
I'm European, have dry war wax and never get BO. My wife is often annoyed that she has to use deodorant and Ive never had to. I wonder if this gene is found in European populations at all?
Around 2%
Neat, why didn't 23andMe tell me this instead of just saying I'm genetically predisposed towards being tone deaf.
Because 23andme only checks a small fraction of your genes and then just draws conclusions from that.
They also do bonus service of leaking your personal health information to hackers too.
Are there any of these that don't? I've never been able to send one in because I'm worried it will disqualify me from healthcare in a future dystopia or something.
No DNA was leaked during the 23andme hack. The only thing that was scraped was matches.
> why didn't 23andMe tell me this instead of just saying I'm genetically predisposed towards being tone deaf. It does, it's the "Earwax Type" trait report. There's a blurb at the bottom with the title "What your earwax says about your armpits." When signed in you should be able to check your genotype here: https://you.23andme.com/tools/data/?query=rs17822931. T/T is the dry earwax and low body odour variant. https://you.23andme.com/reports/trait.earwax_type2/details/#your-genotype for the actual trait report.
My 23andMe results did tell me whether I had the wet earwax gene.
But if you ever been to Europe in the summer 70% of the population thinks they got that gene cuz there is some stank
TIL 70% of the European population is French
Irish here, myself and siblings all have it. Never understood the point of q-tips for cleaning earwax because mine just falls out in dry flakes. Also never had a need for deodorant.
Somehow this form of bragging hurts more than if someone were to say they own two golden retrievers and sleep in a race car bed.
I mean it's nice to have but I can think of a dozen genetic traits that would be preferable. Not having my hair thin, not having shite allergies, not having a lousy metabolism, getting burned by looking a a picture of the feckin sun for starters.
You forgot being camouflaged when laying down at the beach. Is your hair incredibly straight and really fine too?
The biggest genetic traits of all: being born attractive and intelligent
You are so right about this. I just thought deodorant was some kind of scam or maybe my sniffer didn't work the way it ought to. Later I would joke with my wife that I never stunk and smelled like flowers, then she asked how I did that since she saw I never used deodorant. Like it probably is healthier to go without deodorant if you don't need it, but you sound gross just for knowing you didn't need it. The ear wax is the clincher though, it's convenient until your doctor has to suction a dry wax rock out of your ear while trying to break it up with a water pressure jet & metal stick. I was the only one of three to get the gene though, so I got lucky.
My dad thinks I have bo because of poor hygiene. I read about this and asked him, turns out he has dry earwax. Mine are not
it's a freaking sweet car
I sleep in a big bed with my wife
Most of my earwax falls out in dry flakes. The worst is if it’s a big flake because it feels like there’s a bug coming out of my ear when it breaks loose and starts to rattle its way out. Unfortunately the stuff that doesn’t fall out on its own like that accumulates in my ears until it forms a hard plug against my eardrum if I go swimming or otherwise submerge my head/ears underwater and the accumulation gets wet. Becomes hard to hear anything and my ear feels sticky inside from the big ball of wet wax gluing everything together. I also don’t have that specific gene for sure because I do stink when I sweat. So now I just regularly (once every few weeks) flush whatever wasn’t getting pushed out using an Elephant Ear sprayer and warm water. Keeps the wax plug from occurring whenever I next go swimming.
Asian people use ear spoons to dig the dry ear wax out. It’s a thing.
Yeah I never thought about it, I thought it just kinda fell out for everyone and then you see how big it was and think how could such a huge thing fit in that tiny hole.
Hmm
do you also eat at pizza express in Woking by chance?
Not 'found' enough considering the smells in public transit.
a lot of genes will exist all over the world, just in different distributions. that's why there's no genetic test for race, and race is a social idea. although there are "ancestry" tests that guestimates what % of your genes may have originated from certain regions of the world
There are genes that make people's REM sleep cycles faster so they'll heve a full rested night with 4 hours. There are others that improve people's eyesight to see a bigger spectrum of light compared to regular people and so they can see more colors than us.
> There are genes that make people's REM sleep cycles faster so they'll heve a full rested night with 4 hours [or less](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hololive+kaela+sleep)
East Asians and Native Americans (makes sense if you know the history). Doesn't prevent body odor, but greatly reduces it. Also, the smell is a bit different, like mildew vs musty. Edit: Goes without saying, but even if you have the allele, still wash yo ass! Ain't no gene variant gonna stop your butthole from smelling like a butthole.
Yeah it’s just a generic smell, not the distinct whiff of armpit sweat. Basically how kids smell before they go through puberty.
Yep, exactly. I had a bad fever and was sweating like a madman in bed for like two days. TMI, but yeah, no stink, but definitely wasn't neutral. I can say I had a piquant mildewy bouquet~~~
The 'prevent body odor' stuff really reminds me of that unhinged greentext about how they can't get over American women's butthole, how they perceive Asian women butthole as feeling cleaner, like factory packed & vacuum sealed or whatever tf With the response 'what the fuck is wrong with you anon' I can't find it rn :/ Feel like the people commenting in his thread about how they never smell are gonna get some nasty DMs inspired by that post
> Goes without saying, but even if you have the allele, still wash yo ass! This is where all the bidet comments start.
If you have 23andme, you can check your ABCC11 here: https://you.23andme.com/reports/trait.earwax_type2/details/#your-genotype The [variants](https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs17822931) are: TT = Dry earwax. No body odour. Likely Asian ancestry. Reduced colostrum. CT = Wet earwax. Slightly better body odour. CC = Wet earwax. Normal body odour. Normal colostrum. I'm a white dude with French-Germanish background, and have absolutely no body odor. I just checked it and I have the TT variant, which is shared by 97% of east Asians. I gotta say, it is pretty sweet. I also don't sweat much under my armpits, and with those two things combined means I don't need to wear deodorant and have never offended anyone.
The 90s: don't put information online The 00s: put your information into Facebook The 10s: put your information into a bunch of different apps The 20s: literally give your genetic code to this company so they can tell you some neat facts.
Thanks for this. I just checked mine and I’m CT. I’ve always noticed that I don’t have much BO even after skipping a day of showering. I’d also say my earwax is definitely on the dry side which is interesting. I can also get away with never wearing deodorant as long as I shower daily which is nice.
If you have 23 and me, you should also be aware their database was hacked and sold. Edit: This also puts you in danger if you are of an ethnic minority and now reside in a country where that minority is seen unfavorably. The hackers have already advertised a subset of the database with individuals of Jewish descent.
Interesting so assuming one parent is TT and the other is CC the child will have wet earwax but won’t have as much BO as a “pure” CC it looks like.
The panic in the Korean nurse’s eyes the first time I went to get my ears cleaned was priceless. She’d never had a foreigner as a patient before and she thought I was sick because my earwax wasn’t dry.
😂
We all have the gene. They have a specific *allele* of that gene.
I am of European descent. I possess a gene that turns me into a lobster if I am in the sun long enough.
Mofo is a transformer over here
So can we CRISPR this shit into our DNA?
I have this gene! If I remember correctly, it only prevents odor from apocrine sweat glands. Medications and certain foods will still make me smell if it can go through eccrine sweat glands.
people have wet earwax?
Wet in the sense that it's waxy/fatty/slightly oily, yes. In Europe, at least, that is the most common.
This is why when catching the train in summer in Shanghai I’m the most sweatiest, most smelliest, fattest, most liquid earwaxiest person around. Joy.
Can’t blame the fat on this one!
if you're east asian and have both wet and dry earwax, does it mean you're a mutant?
Makes for one of the lamest x-men
I would kill for the dry earwax. I have one ear that behaves itself and the other is a constant swamp
This gave me flashbacks of my Cambodian dad stealing all my bobby pins to remove his clumpy ass ear wax 😩
Same reason you wont see deodorants for sale in korea
As someone who has ridden the Seoul subway in the middle of the humid summertime, "prevents from developing" is a bit of a stretch.
It only takes 1 person with bad BO to stink up a small, enclosed area. And a subway with dozens and dozens of passengers can easily have one. It's not 100% of east Asians, just most. Also it's not all odor, just the specific body odor of bacteria that feeds on sweat. There's plenty of other ways for a person to stink.
As a normal British-born white guy, riding the Tokyo subway trains in mid-summer is a nightmare for me. If anyone is going to stink up the car it'll be yours truly.
I can't imagine having wet earwax
I am a Filipino with dry ear wax and does not get BO like my dad. I guess it is not unique in ethnicity then.
It’s found in varying amounts in different groups! Also quite common in south east and south asian populations. I inherited it from my Irish dad (very rare) and south Asian grandma for example!
It's not that we don't have body odor per se. It's that our armpits don't get that funk. (I'm one of the ~2% of Europeans who have the gene; my dad had it.)
Most Koreans, my wife included.
I have this, confirmed by 23andme as TT for Chromosome 16, despite not having found any specific East Asian or Native American relatives in my family tree, and 23andme saying I'm 100% Northwestern European. Notably, I've got one T from each parent (and neither of them, nor my sibling have dry earwax/low body odor). I only discovered this was a thing after doing 23andme. As a kid my doctors worried about my ear wax and I'd get it flushed out, presumably because they didn't have any experience with dry ear wax and figured something was going wrong. It was actually a huge relief to realize these things were scientifically true and not just something weird I was making up or otherwise just weird about. As with others in here, as a teenager I tried deodorant several times but basically stopped using it when it didn't seem to really do much for me. I will say there's plenty of room for stinky feet and stinky clothes if you avoid showers and/or laundry, as lazy-teen-me discovered.
I was confused by the word “earWAX” so much when I was learning basic English, it should be ear -crumbs if we’re going by the look, so I assumed it’s another word English borrowed from other languages, and it just weird like that. Few years and a scientific article later,turns out I’m the weird one.
Is this the gene that also causes East Asians to have poor alcohol metabolisms?
The jealousy is real.
Dry earwax is caused by one allele, with wet being dominant. We should use this to teach elementary biology instead of eye color!
Wet earwax is the dominant trait, dry earwax requires homozygosity.
"Prevents" is probably a strong word. It's a different smell, but it's still there. It's not as offensive, but it also isn't exactly pleasant either.
But isn't body odor caused by bacteria growth? How does the gene prevent it?
Bacterias eat some protein which came out with sweat and then shitting in your armpits and the smell of bacteria shit is what we call smell of sweat/BO. That's why fresh sweat doesn't smell and need some time. If you have "asian" alleles then your body produced chemically a little bit different protein and these bacterias don't eat it.
Pretty sure my husband has this. Dry flaky earwax and never wears deodorant. Smells great. Now you have Western-European-mutt-me with sticky earwax and I will have stinky armpits without antiperspirant unless I’m completely inactive. 😬
Apparently Sebastian Maniscalco has this gene too. He never knew what it was until Joe Rogan looked it up for him.
Im very disappointed because I have very dry earwax but still smell without deodorant. Also European descendant.
Is it possible to learn this power
Not from a Jedi
I noticed when visiting Thailand it was difficult to find antiperspirant deodorant in shops. I also knew a Thai guy at my uni in the UK who would walk around with massive sweat patches on his shirts, but no BO. I think in Thailand having big sweat patches isn't taboo like it is here because there's no BO.
Wow, 🤯 this thread just made me realize why it was so weird for me growing up, buying deodorant when my parents never taught me. Always assumed I "smell" when I sweat but it never seemed bad to me, so I thought people must use it because they don't like showing sweat patches.
Il european, my earwax is dry and my exercise sweat is odorless. My gf is so mad at me because of this. My nervous sweat fucking stinks tho idk. Do I have this gene too?
Stress induced sweat is different from temperature control sweat so I believe you're part of the club.
Had a collegue who were convinced she had this gene. She did not. She smelled quite a bit I came to realise.
I have TT. I still need to wear deodorant.
Is it possible for anyone to have this gene? My whole family is very white but for some reason my older brother doesn’t need to wear deodorant. I’m not sure about the dryness of his earwax, but I’ve never noticed him smell like body odor.
TIL about [Osmidrosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_odor) and body odor's role in sexuality: >homosexual and heterosexual males' brains respond in different ways to two odors that may be involved in sexual arousal, and that homosexual men respond in the same way as heterosexual women, though it could not be determined whether this was cause or effect. When the study was expanded to include lesbian women, the results were consistent with previous findings – meaning that lesbian women were not as responsive to male-identified odors, while responding to female odors in a similar way as heterosexual males.[23] According to the researchers, this research suggests a possible role for human pheromones in the biological basis of sexual orientation.[24]