Conditions

Nose Shape Determined By Climate, Researchers Say [VIDEO]

By Alleah Kiamco | Update Date: Mar 18, 2017 11:28 PM EDT

On Thursday, a research showed results of a study that climate plays a key role on how the human nose is shaped. The study focuses on using three-dimensional images of hundreds of people coming from different parts of the country and continent as well as ancestry with a varying factor of temperature and humidity and local climate.

The study shows that people from humid and warmer climates tend to have wider noses and those that come from dry and cold climates have been distinguished to have narrower noses, the Reuters reported.

The nose has mucous and capillaries that aides to humidify and warm inhaled air before it successfully reaches the sensitive portions of the respiratory tract. With the nose's primary function of smelling and breathing, those having narrower nasal airways help increase contact with substances of heat and moisture.

Arslan Zaidi, a geneticist at the Penn State University said that with those factors to consider, people in colder climates have the advantage than those living in the warmer part of the Earth. He said that the finding of the study connects and supports the anthropologist Arthur Thomson's theory on 1859-1935, called as the Thomson's rule which generally states that the anatomy of the snout depends on where a person lives in the world; people from dry, cold climates accentuates to have longer and thinner noses than people from humid and warm climates.

The journal of the study is published in the Plos Genetics where researchers form the U.S., Belgium, and Ireland based 3D facial imaging of about 476 volunteers coming from Northern European, East Asian, South Asian and West African descents. The results are in the line of further study to show the links between nose shape and climate.

Noreen van Cramon-Taubadel, a researcher also involved in the study, said that although the climate is one of the key reasons for the nose's formation, it is unlikely that it is all that there is. She said that various causes affect on how the nose is shaped like genetics, hereditary passes and ancestry are also there to consider, The Guardian reported.

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