Koreans Don't Stink!

A lot of traits are associated with other traits by virtue of where they are attached to the DNA, so some other trait may be the one being selected for and this one just going along for the ride.

Google the Siberian Silver Fox experiments for actual clinical examples and a much more detailed explanation.

Here's the actual genetic mechanism I was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiotropy

Pleiotropy

Quote Tom Tom Binks:

With a lunatic up North talking about going nuclear, this might not be the best time to go around making statements like this. I mean, right at the time you can use all the friends you can get militarily.

I'm not Korean. I'm sure the Koreans (North and South) are aware of their smell-less armpits and I don't see how this could possibly affect a political situation...

If it's true, based on reading it somewhere, Asians have fewer sweat glands. Those who emit a more odiferous odor might just have more sweat glands, due to evolving where sweat glands were needed to prevent us from overheating.

I also read that the occupying GI's in Japan were considered very odiferous in a bad way, due to eating so much meat, compared to Asians.

Body odor doesn't bother me, unless it is due to fungus, based on non-washing for a long time. However, there are people that believe that garlic wards off illnesses, and it is hard for me to sit next to them, since their breath permeates the air around them. Let's include chain smokers that smell from nicotine.

I read once that having apocrine glands is considered a dreadful affliction in Japan, with a Latin medical name, osmidrosis axilla, and anyone unfortunate enough to have them can get surgery to remove them.

Now there's a fact I didn't have a clue about.

Well, you could have let readers know what those glands are; I don't. Nor will I look it up, just for spite.

Your skin has two main types of sweat glands: eccrine glands and apocrine glands. Eccrine glands occur over most of your body and open directly onto the surface of the skin. Apocrine glands develop in areas abundant in hair follicles, such as your armpits and groin, and they empty into the hair follicle just before it opens onto the skin surface.

When your body temperature rises, your eccrine glands secrete fluid onto the surface of your skin, where it cools your body as it evaporates. This fluid is composed mainly of water and salt.

Apocrine glands produce a milky fluid that most commonly is secreted when you're under emotional stress. This fluid is odorless until it combines with bacteria found normally on your skin.

Fascinating. Apparently Asians either have fewer apocrine glands, or the fluid produced by these glands is different and doesn't smell bad when broken down by bacteria.
Here's a theory right off the top: back when our sense of smell was more important than it is now, we could garner a lot of information based on another person's odor. Those born without the apocrine glands, or with fewer of them (or with apocrine fluid that doesn't smell) wouldn't be giving any information away through odor. This could have a huge benefit in deceiving opponents and rivals. This could possibly have led to that trait saturating a population!
Is this plausible?
If so, any idea why this trait took hold in one population and not another?

Thanks, that was interesting. I wonder what trait could be linked with the sweat glands/composition of sweat? Could be almost anything...

Yes, could be almost anything. The foxes had a connection between the adrenal function and the fur color. Go figure.

If it's true that Koreans don't emit body order it's a little ironic, because since as early as the 17th century, the Japanese referred to Koreans as "Garlic Eaters" It was a slur of course but based on what they considered the unpleasant smell of Koreans' breath. The Japanese who seldom used garlic in their cooking were likely sensitive to the smell that must have permeated the clothes, hair and breaths of some Koreans who often used the stuff in their cuisine.

Most Westerners don't appreciate that Asians see themselves quite differently from one another. I suppose it could be considered racist, but if so then Asians are just as racist as Westerners because, unless they live or spend considerable time in the West, most don't appreciate the distinctions Westerners draw between themselves. I think it has a lot more to do with an insular focus and lack of experience than racism.

Now, calling Koreans "Garlic Eaters" has a lot to do with at least bigotry, but, of course, that's quite common around the globe.

When I married my wife, who is Puerto Rican, and I met her extended family, I was surprised to learn that there are sharp lines of distinction drawn by Latin people between Latin peoples. There is also a fair amount of prejudice and bigotry toward each other.

The Puerto Ricans I know and have known considered it insulting to mistake Cuban, Dominican, or Central or South American customs for their own. To a degree it had to do with not appreciating being lumped together in one general category of Latins, but it sometime had a lot to do with the fact that they didn't like some particular group, Cubans being a good example. Generally they felt like all Cubans looked down their noses at Puerto Ricans, and I have to say that far more than once, when I met Cubans and the subject came up because they learned of my wife's nationality, they were pretty condescending, albeit in as polite a way as possible, towards Puerto Ricans in general. What was amusing about the "rivalry" was that it extended beyond attitudes and the sort of things you might expect from bigotry to details like what beans were used in cooking. Beans are a staple in Latin cultures, but my wife's family all found it equally hilarious and disgusting that the Cubans used black beans in their national rice & beans dish, while they prided themselves on using red beans or gandules (sometimes called pigeon peas or pigeon beans)

CUBAN RICE & (BLACK) BEANS


PUERTO RICAN RICE & (RED) BEANS


PUERTO RICAN GANDULES


Then one day my wife's grandmother (a fabulous cook btw) served us Rice & Black Beans. I commented that this was just what Cubans eat and she gave me a look that would curdle milk, removed my plate and refused to feed me that night. I could never get any of the family members to explain the difference but I never made the mistake again. The following is a photos of a Puerto Rican version of Rice & Black Beans. If you compare it the photo of the Cuban version you won't find much of difference except maybe the Cuban beans have a darker color, but that may be the photo and not the beans.

PUERTO RICAN RICE & (BLACK) BEANS

Of course the obvious difference is that your wife's grandmother served Puerto Rican black beans and rice, NOT Cuban black beans and rice. Any fool can see the difference.

I know. I was a fool and blind to the obvious when it came to black beans, but I was not fool when it came to my wife's grandmother and her family.

The old woman was a Santeria bruja who had a very creepy negrito doll which she used to cast spells. She also carried a huge pair of sewing shears in her purse which she once used when she was 83 to fend off muggers in the elevator of her apartment house in Jamaica, Queens.

The whole time I knew her she swore she was going to live to 100. She missed the mark by three days which proves that when you sell your soul to the devil, Old Scratch will still find a way to cheat you out of what you were promised.

That interesting, following this thread for more amusing replies.

Sounds like an awesome woman!

She was, if you're impressed by rattlesnake/scorpion hybrids that stand 4' 10" tall, dress like women, call their overweight grandchildren "Gordito" ("Little Fatty"), threaten one grandson with falsely reporting him to the police for physically abusing an old rattlesnake/scorpion hybrid in a dress, tells her daughters she wants to and is planning on outliving them, and thinks it absolutely and hysterically funny that a) one of her sisters took an ax to her cheating husband's brand new car, b) another took a baseball bat to her sleeping husband; breaking 20 bones in his body because he was mean to the 11 dogs who were receptacles for ancestor spirits and kept in her home and fed grilled steak every night, and c) a third sister shoved her 8 months pregnant daughter-in-law down a flight of stairs. And when I say she thought it was funny, I mean she was in tears laughing as she told me the stories of her sister's antics.

One of her own personal stories recounted the night her husband Hector came home from work and found her sitting on the front porch of their home.

"Coca (it wasn't her real name. All of the bruja sisters had nicknames that were just sounds and didn't mean anything - "Manna," "Da Ta" and "Jatine") I have something I need to tell you," he said to her. "Tomorrow I need to go to the wedding of Maria Torres and Victor Cruz."

"Why?" she asked her husband,"you don't even know the girl or the boy." Slowing stepping away Hector answered his wife, "Because rumor has it I am the girl's father."

In a flash, Coca leaped to her feet and doused Hector with kerosine from a container she likely kept close by for just such an eventuality, and then chased him through the house and around the yard throwing lit matches at him, while, according to witnesses, he giggled like a little boy and half their children yelled "Run Poppi run!" and the other half yelled "Get him Momma, get him!"

Fortunately for Hector, he never stumbled or fell and the matches kept going out when she threw them. He eventually fled the scene and went somewhere to get cleaned up. The next day he attended the wedding of his rumored daughter Maria to young Victor Cruz, and didn't return home for a week, by which time, all was forgiven and Coca welcomed him back.

The story was told to me by Coca herself, tears streaming down her face, and corroborated by Jose Castillos, one of the witnesses and the teenaged son of family friends, a doctor from Colombia and his wife. I'm sure Jose was a credible witness because in time he went to college and then med school and earned a medical degree in psychiatry. In his spare time, he performed as a motorcycle stunt driver, using the stage name "Jose Canuc" (Get it? Jose Can U C ) He was wearing American Flag festooned helmets and jumpsuits long before Evel Knievel became a household name.

Yea, she was awesome alright. The way BabaYaga, Morgan Le Fey and Attila the Hun were awesome.

Sounds impressive. Formidable even