this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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I think body odor has an evolutionary reason to exist, and that reason applies to prehistoric humans living in small gather hunterer societies of <150 people only. Whatever that reason was, is not necessary for our survival in modern society where you meet thousands of people over your lifetime and run into new strangers constantly.
I dont think body odor ever played an evolutionary role. As far as I know body odor is caused by bacterias eating and multiplying whenever we sweat. If this is the case body odor is here because we sweat which isnt that common within the animal kingdom.
(Although dont quote me on any of this, this is just what I seem to remember and Im lazy to look it up - tldr i might be lying)
That doesn't exclude it having a purpose. A lot of our existence we owe to bacteria inhabiting our body
And a lot of what happens in evolution is passed down the generations not because it's useful but because it doesn't hinder reproduction.
Body odour does hinder reproduction, though.
But it doesn't though. Before people bathed consistently, everyone smelled. It wouldn't have been a factor in partner selection.
This is pretty presumptuous, as there appears to be a lot we can pick up about potential mates based on their body odor.
I'm absolutely not an anthropologist, but if we evolved in small <100 person communities, often settling near water, I'd imagine keeping everyone relatively stank-free wouldn't have been impossible.
There has been some research in this area pointing to being able to smell if someone is sick. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10550911/
Not everything is an evolved functional trait, like the first poster was saying.
Loosing our hair and getting greasy was a functional adaptation. That grease getting stinky is just a byproduct that didn't introduce a negative selection pressure.
Evolution doesn't have a plan, it just takes the shortest path towards better that doesn't make things worse.
Giraffes have a nerve that runs from their brain, down to their torso, then back up to the top of their neck. There's no reason or benefit to this, it's purely because when what the nerve runs to evolved in reptiles, it was at the top of the torso. Neck gets longer, nerve follows since there's no pressure to select against stupid nerve layout. There's a species of toad that evolved to become so small that their ear bones can't actually pick up the sound of their species mating chirp. They still chirp, but none of them can hear it, and instead they signal based on seeing the motion of chirping.
Nope, evolution is chaos. The current planet is the output of a chaotic system. You seriously think koalas play an evolutionary role? Platypus? Hell even humans have about 20 design flaws. Sometimes nature just threw shit at a wall and called it "good enough."
20? I can name hundreds...
Lol don’t be mad
Pretty sure body odor would have worked against them. Once a predator detects body odor of a human.. it knows that body odor belongs to human meat.
A lot of predators avoid humans though
I feel like feline predators seem more likely to approach regardless of the situation. By feline I mean like Bob cats, leopards, panthers etc..
https://y.yarn.co/38587c83-790b-4493-bd0f-a89f3f680ad0_text.gif
lol...
That's not how evolution works.
It might just be there was not enough of a selective pressure to remove it. Or something else that causes it has a more important function than smell.