the.com/earwax
the gunk that makes your ears self-cleaning, then snitches on your ancestry.
means The waxy, yellowish-to-brown secretion produced by glands in the ear canal that traps dust and debris and keeps the ear lubricated and protected.
from A plain compound of "ear" and "wax," both ancient Germanic words — "ear" from Old English "ēare" (a cousin of Latin "auris" and the source of words like "auditory"), and "wax" from Old English "weax," the stuff bees make. The medical term is "cerumen," borrowed from Latin "cera," meaning wax — so whether you go homely or clinical, you end up at the honeycomb.
- two types
- wet or dry, decided by one gene
- self-cleaning
- jaw motion slowly conveys it outward
- ancestry tell
- dry type common in East Asians
- antibacterial
- acidic chemistry kills invading microbes
- whale records
- earwax plugs log a whale's life history
earwax removal industry — global market worth $2.3 billion annually, dominated by ear cleaning clinics in asia
cerumen impaction — affects 1 in 20 adults and 1 in 3 elderly people, leading cause of conductive hearing loss