Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Researchers say size really does matter

A story released today by Sky News reports that according to a new study conducted by scientists at Open University in Britain reports tall men and short women are the most successful at attracting partners and having children.

University scientists based their finding on an analysis of data from 10,000 men and women born in Britain in one week in March 1958.

They found that the taller the men were, the less likely they were to be unmarried or childless 42 years later in 2000. For women, however, the opposite was true.

Dr. Daniel Nettle, who led the research reported in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, said: "It seems that tall men and petite women are favored in evolutionary terms, even in a modern population, so the height difference between men and women is unlikely to disappear."

The findings support earlier research which suggested that women find taller men more attractive, said Dr. Nettle. But for men height was less important than indications of a woman's fertility.

Short women generally reached puberty earlier than tall women, whose fertility was often delayed because of the extra energy they spent growing.

In addition because women prefer men taller than themselves, tall women were left with a smaller pool of potential partners. This contributed to the evolutionary selection of short women.