perspiration, in most mammals, water given off by the intact skin, either as vapour by simple evaporation from the epidermis (insensible perspiration) or as sweat, a form of cooling in which liquid actively secreted from sweat glands evaporates from the body surface. Sweat glands, although found in the majority of mammals, constitute the primary means of heat dissipation only in certain hoofed animals (orders Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla) and in primates, including humans. Their secretion is largely water (usually about 99 percent), with small amounts of dissolved salts and amino acids.
When the body temperature rises, the sympathetic nervous system stimulates the eccrine sweat glands to secrete water to the skin surface, where it cools the body by evaporation. Thus, eccrine sweat is an important mechanism for temperature control. In extreme conditions, human beings may excrete several litres of such sweat in an hour.
Human eccrine sweat is essentially a dilute sodium chloride solution with trace amounts of other plasma electrolytes. In some cases a reddish pigment may also be present. In a person unused to heavy sweating, the loss of sodium chloride during a period of heavy labour or high temperatures may be great (see sodium deficiency), but the efficiency of the gland increases with use, and in acclimatized persons the salt loss is decreased.
The apocrine sweat glands, associated with the presence of hair in human beings (as on the scalp, the armpit, and the genital region), continuously secrete a concentrated fatty sweat into the gland tube. Emotional stress stimulates contraction of the gland, expelling its contents. Skin bacteria break down the fats into unsaturated fatty acids that possess a pungent odour.