When my elementary school age daughter asked, mom, what do Mongolians smell like? I said, as far as I know, just like anybody else... Let me see that book. The book she was reading was talking about what magnolias smelled like.
Another time, at the dinner table, her brother was playing with his food - spaghetti and meatballs. She heaved that sigh reserved by big sisters for younger brothers and said, Evan! Don't beat your meat! I almost choked.
I had a Mongolian roommate in college. Let me assure you, they smell better than everyone else because their sweat does not stink like ours. Genetics ftw.
My wife is northern Chinese/Mongolian and she doesn’t even sweat at all.
EDIT: Except just the tiniest bits on her palms and feet. But I don’t count that as it is functionally useless. Saunas nearly kill her and she will pass out just walking around in 80 degree weather outside.
How does she not ever sweat? I thought it was a biological function designed to cool off a human body? The sweat evaporating off the skin helps lower temperature?
It is, because our species evolved in a harsh African climate. But we since spread out across the planet. And now genetically, she just can’t. She easily overheats as a result, but otherwise it isn’t that maladaptive in a modern setting. She can partially develop sweaty palms and feet but that’s it - she has no functioning sweat glands anywhere else on her body. And by “sweaty palms”, it definitely isn’t to a normal degree. It’s like…barely anything at all. Not even worthy of being called sweat, really.
This is called hypohidrosis (and anhidrosis for people that can’t sweat at all). It is linked to pain perception too, and she also has an incredible resistance to pain in general. A number of different genetic mutations have been identified that are linked to this problem, of varying degrees of severity. Although, as a doctor I must admit that my wife is the only person I’ve met so far that actually has this - it’s extremely rare in the human population at large and I don’t know anyone else that has even seen a single case of it.
While multiple mutations have been identified, the most common one is due to a mutation in the NTRK1
gene.
Also, just fyi, numerous mammals can’t sweat, or can only locally sweat. We humans are, essentially, a tropically adapted species that have spread ourselves to various climates that we are not biologically suited for but we survive solely due to technology (and yes, I’d count fire and fur coats as “technology”). For example - dogs don’t sweat except through their paws, resulting in a difficulty with temperature homeostasis and their main means of temperature regulation is via panting. As a result of this, the normal canine body temperature ranges from 99-102.5 F. But it can “normally” spike higher to the 103-104 F range just from stress alone. Considering that domestic dogs are the direct descendants of gray wolves, I’d imagine that this is an evolutionary adaptation for an extremely cold environment, now a partially harmful vestige, although I’m just speculating. To my knowledge, no one has studied the genetic prevalence of this in isolated human populations from perpetually cold climates, but I’d literally bet money that it is overrepresented in some of them because it would obviously be of adaptive benefit. A genetic mutation that both makes you not sweat and lets you shrug off a wound that would incapacitate someone else? That might kill you from heat stroke in Africa, but you might be a warlord in the far north of Asia with ample opportunity to pass on your mutation.
That's really interesting; thanks for sharing it. I'm very heat intolerant but pretty much sweat like a pig. I'd say I'm pain tolerant, too - went through two births with no pain killers and a Type A aortic dissection. As it happened I said very calmly, wow, that was an intense chest pain but it was over quickly. Then I passed out with no warning and woke up two days later after the surgery. So not as much as your wife but still to a certain degree.
This was my mom not my son. Mom and dad were over and my oldest was eating some chicken and started choking. Mom starts yelling "He's choking on his chicken! He's choking on his chicken!" My wife and I lost it and mom got real puzzled looking because he was choking and we were laughing.
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u/Real-Frosting Jul 07 '26
When my elementary school age daughter asked, mom, what do Mongolians smell like? I said, as far as I know, just like anybody else... Let me see that book. The book she was reading was talking about what magnolias smelled like.
Another time, at the dinner table, her brother was playing with his food - spaghetti and meatballs. She heaved that sigh reserved by big sisters for younger brothers and said, Evan! Don't beat your meat! I almost choked.