Just as a reminder, it’s also good to ask “is there any big disadvantage?”. Sometimes, a thing evolves traits that don’t help but don’t cause enough harm to stop being passed on.
It’s interesting how many people don’t realize this. We were having a casual discussion one day and one of the smartest people I know, who has been educated in a lot of science, didn’t realize that neutral or even outright negative traits can occur and persist in evolution. Evolution doesn’t create a perfect being. It’s just creates those that can survive long enough to reproduce better than those that can’t do it as well.
“There’s no such thing as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn’t matter whether a solution’s optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight
Another good one:
“Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight
Yes, the sweat keeps you cool and the smell attracts others with different immune system.
My partner’s sweat smells so fucking UNFFFFF and has for the last decade and I cannot get enough of it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
You’re a girl I imagine? I feel like girls are more likely to experience this than dudes. Anecdotal of course
I want to ask for help to deal with the cognitive dissonance I am experiencing. This information is proof that I (if this study applies to me) will discriminate people based on something they cannot control… which is wrong, correct?
I think all humans have some kind of natural scent that can be used to “find a mate”. Not everyone will find that scent attractive but your potential partner might. It’s basically a way we evolved to find a partner to reproduce and get stronger as specie. Of course someone who better understand can correct me.
Sweating allows us to run prey to death.
Hormones are weird. We can smell things we don’t think we can smell.
Did you mean pheromones? There is no evidence that humans are affected by pheromones.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned here is the fact that sweat acts as a lubricant between the skin of your torso and upper-inner arm preventing chapping with increased skin-on-skin contact movement.
