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Study Explains Explains Why We're Not All Beautiful
Live Science ^ | 3-28-2007 | Andrea Thompson

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: beauty; evolution; lek; paradox; selection; sex; study
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To: jmc813
"I'm sorry. Anna Kournakova is beautiful. Julia Louis Dreyfuss is beautiful. Jolie ain't."

I agree with you. If all the guys are fussing over women that look like Angelina, they'll leave the pretty ones for me.

81 posted on 04/04/2007 1:49:44 PM PDT by blam
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To: greenthumbedislndr

In the dark, everyone looks like Bradjolina.......


82 posted on 04/04/2007 1:50:02 PM PDT by Red Badger (If it's consensus, it's not science. If it's science, there's no need for consensus......)
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To: Red Badger

A footnote on page 92 of the study noted that there is often a correlation between male uglyness and long tongues.


83 posted on 04/04/2007 1:50:11 PM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. Don't eat Spinich. The spinich growers are against the war and funding our troops)
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To: johnny7

I wonder if Waxman has been a lifelong smoker, with those pronounced airholes.


84 posted on 04/04/2007 1:50:23 PM PDT by Sig Sauer P220
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To: reagan_fanatic

Jane Russell, right?


85 posted on 04/04/2007 1:52:28 PM PDT by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon))
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To: Sig Sauer P220

Waxman was such a rotten kid that his ‘rents would use that schnoz as finger hooks to drag his pathetic carcass wherever they went.


86 posted on 04/04/2007 1:52:50 PM PDT by Thumper1960 (Unleash the Dogs of War as a Minority, or perish as a party.)
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To: Arrowhead1952
Wow! I say again - WOW! No wonder Rosie hates her....
87 posted on 04/04/2007 1:53:02 PM PDT by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: Arrowhead1952; digger48

Back at you.

88 posted on 04/04/2007 1:53:35 PM PDT by BulletBobCo
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To: blam

89 posted on 04/04/2007 1:54:04 PM PDT by 50mm (algore uses 20 times as much energy as me)
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To: sageb1

Different related perspective

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1642733/posts


90 posted on 04/04/2007 1:54:43 PM PDT by Abogado (The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they are realities.)
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu
How about because people have varying concepts of "beauty?" What is attractive to one, could be ugly to another (for animals).

Right on the money. I have known several men who thought that skinny ugly women were the sexiest things they had ever seen. Plus, as you say, lots of men marry because the love the woman(and vice versa)and don't much care how they look, not to mention the women who marry for money(in the old days it was for horses or land)and could care less what their husband looks like. Some men do this too but it is not as common amoung men because, I think, women are brighter about such things.

91 posted on 04/04/2007 1:55:08 PM PDT by calex59
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To: Sig Sauer P220

No idea what you’re talking about. I know plenty of non-smokers with big nostrils.


92 posted on 04/04/2007 1:55:34 PM PDT by sageb1 (This is the Final Crusade. There are only 2 sides. Pick one.)
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To: stylecouncilor

ping


93 posted on 04/04/2007 1:55:55 PM PDT by windcliff
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To: Sig Sauer P220
I wonder if Waxman has been a lifelong smoker...

Dunno... but he's been a lifelong a-hole.

94 posted on 04/04/2007 1:56:45 PM PDT by johnny7 ("Issue in Doubt." -Col. David Monroe Shoup, USMC 1943)
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To: johnny7

95 posted on 04/04/2007 1:57:13 PM PDT by muleskinner
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To: blam

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

A pretty woman makes her husband look small
And very often causes his downfall
As soon as he married her and then she starts
To do the things that will break his heart

But if you make an ugly woman your wife
A-you’ll be happy for the rest of your life
An ug-a-ly woman cooks meals on time
And she’ll always give you peace of mind

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

[Sax solo]

Don’t let your friends say you have no taste
Go ahead and marry anyway
Though her face is ugly, her eyes don’t match
Take it from me, she’s a better catch

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

[Spoken:]
Say man!
Hey baby!
I saw your wife the other day!
Yeah?
Yeah, an’ she’s ug-leeee!
Yeah, she’s ugly, but she sure can cook, baby!
Yeah, alright!

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you

DANG, my wife must still be too beautiful cuz I haven’t yet found happiness... somebody tell her to quit takin showers.


96 posted on 04/04/2007 1:58:40 PM PDT by greenthumbedislndr
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To: Rummyfan
No you say!


97 posted on 04/04/2007 1:58:43 PM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (Many people are being held as slaves by the democrats through government assistance.)
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To: blam

98 posted on 04/04/2007 1:58:47 PM PDT by 50mm (algore uses 20 times as much energy as me)
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To: Arrowhead1952
I'll see that bet...

...and raise you this!!!

99 posted on 04/04/2007 1:59:26 PM PDT by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon))
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To: DCPatriot

That one in the red dress could put your eyes out!!


100 posted on 04/04/2007 2:00:27 PM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (Many people are being held as slaves by the democrats through government assistance.)
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