Posted on 04/04/2007 1:06:34 PM PDT by blam
Study Explains Why We're Not All Beautiful
By Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 28 March 2007
09:47 am ET
A new study explains why we aren't all born with Brad Pitt’s perfectly chiseled features or Angelina Jolie’s pouty lips.
A long-standing thorn in the side of biologists has been the difficulty in accounting for the enormous variation between individuals when sexual selection by females for the most attractive mates should quickly spread the “best” genes through a population.
“It is a major problem for evolutionary biology,” said study team leader Marion Petrie of Newcastle University.
The lek paradox
For some species, females select the most attractive males to mate with: female peacocks will choose males with the longest tail feathers—the peacock version of George Clooney. These more attractive features usually indicate some other level of genetic fitness, such as disease resistance, that the female’s offspring will then also inherit.
According to this method of sexual selection, if females only bred with the most attractive males, then all males should be equally attractive and sexual selection could not take place. (In the peacocks’ case, all males would have similarly long tails.) But clearly this isn’t the case: for every Johnny Depp out there, there’s a George Costanza—in humans, birds and other animals alike.
This so-called “lek paradox” (a lek is a group of males congregated for mating) has plagued evolutionary biologists for decades.
“If you had no variation at all, you wouldn’t get evolution,” Petrie told LiveScience.
But a group of British scientists think they have found the answer to the paradox in the human body’s “DNA repair kits.”
DNA repair kits
A cell’s DNA repair kit is not really a kit but a set of molecular processes that routinely repair the damage
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
You say that as a joke, but there really is a correlation between crossed eyes and large breasts in females, so there very well may be some sort of male counterpart to this phenomenon, lol.
Then why are there so damned many of them?
Indeed.
This is entirely anecdoctal but several years ago I happened to be in this Midwestern town and down the street comes this couple. They stop to greet my dog. I observed (as cops do...cops never "see" something) that the woman was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her every feature was perfect, absolutely perfect. Fantastic hair, beautiful blue eyes, shining teeth, the works, my friend.
I also observed that her husband (I know because they told me so) was one of the homeliest men I had ever seen. If his mother had seen him coming out she would have jammed that sucker back in there. I mean he was flat ugly, not a good feature about that man. If he had ever held a mirror and a gun at the same time he would have killed himself.
Now, you tell me that evolution calls for the female to seek out the best looking male. The only explanation in this case would be if this doll of a woman were blind, and she wasn't. The evolution theory in this case is wrong, dead wrong.
More proof Cruise is an abject idiot.
Sheesh!
Yeah, but Waxman isn’t in the gene pool. (if you get my [genetic] drift)...
I know why we’re not all beautiful without running any tests.
Age.
We prize youth.
I don’t think Tom Cruise ever went out with Salma Hayek...I don’t believe they ever made a movie together.
I want to know why everone is not above average.
Nonetheless......I'd love to do indepth research to detect any genetic flaws in either of them.
Are you thinking of Penelope Cruz? Tom had to find a woman who shared his last name!
That’s the face a camel makes just before it spits. My God... what a repulsive example of womanhood.
I thought you may have been thinking of Penelope Cruz...Vanilla Sky, right?
I was thinking Hyek, a buddy made sure I realized the idiocy of my thinking and corrected me.
It's TWHOOO! < /Blazing Saddles>
Perhaps, but they have been enhanced/re-plumped to what they are today with fat injections.
Somebody say "SATIN SHEETS"???
Rosie never did men..........sheesh.
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