21 November 2007

Why Catholic Girls Like Barry White

Recent anthropological research:

Deeper voice pitch predicts reproductive success in male hunter-gatherers...

The anthropologists studied the reproductive patterns of the Hadza, a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer tribe that lives much the same way that most human beings did 200,000 years ago... The females gather berries and dig for tubers, while the males hunt animals and collect honey.

The researchers found that, controlling for age, males with lower vocal pitch had more surviving children.

Previous studies have also shown a relationship between testosterone and deeper vocal pitch, and so increased testosterone may contribute to the male's ability to hunt.

“It’s possible that vocal dimorphism has evolved over thousands of years, partly due to mate selection,” said Apicella. “Perhaps at one time, men and women's voices were closer in pitch than they are today.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fascinating. Absolutely enlightening. Funny, too.