What you dig out on the end of that Q-tip contains much more than just ear wax.
Turns out, that wax can reveal your ethnicity, your gender, and even the extent of your body odor!
According to Newser, 16 men volunteered to lend their ears to a team of chemists.
The researchers took samples and found that the earwax of people of African and European ethnicity, which tends to be wetter in nature, is far different from that of Native Americans and East Asians, who tend to have drier, flakier earwax.
The Philadelphia researchers heated the wax to release VOCs, or volatile organic compounds.
Popular Science reports those with wet wax had the highest level of VOCs, 11 out of 12.
Researchers say that means that wet earwax smells stronger than the drier variety.
And, because earwax ‘strength’ is linked to body odor, those with wet earwax are scientifically smellier than their flakier-waxed fellow human beings.
Scientists, who posted a paper in the Journal of Chromatography B, hope earwax could help tell more about people’s diets and other social factors in the future.
For instance, last year, biologists dug through a 10-inch layer of a blue whale’s earwax and learned about the pollutants he came into contact with, along with his stress and testosterone levels.
