Those unsexy baritones

Jacob Koshy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:07:00 GMT

Why (from an evolutionary perspective) do male voices crack, and become deeper post puberty? Apparently, as a new study this week points out, nobody really knows--and more damningly the report suggests that a deep voice may not confer much of an advantage to men, over women.

The study by Harvard anthropologist, Corin Apicella, studied the vocal preferences of 88 men and women of the Hadza, a hunter gatherer tribe in Tanzania. As reported in the New Scientist magazine, the study participants were asked to react to the voice of a member of the opposite sex saying the Swahili word "hujambo" - loosely translated as hello - in a computer-altered high and low register. Women were asked whether the voice belonged to someone likely to make a good hunter and husband, while men rated the voices in terms of skill as a forager and suitability as a wife.

Turns out that the nursing women among the lot preferred the high pitched males, while the singles went for the boomers. The men thought that the deep-voiced women made better foragers, but fancied the high pitched ones. If the nursing factor was removed, women had no clear preference for the baritones.

Hunter societies, researchers say, were a crucial era in our evolutionary history. Studying them, therefore, throws vital clues on how and why our psychological preferences evolved--and they still do--they way they did.

So coming back to the voices, why do all those androgens make larynxes grow bigger. Is it a deliberate evolutionary step, or one of those accidental side-effects that we will never really pinpoint? Well known leaders, such as Barack Obama, have rich deep voices. Any clues there?

Guess if you were to count the heartbreaks, wars, murders and crimes committed for love and sex, wouldn't it be evolutionarily more efficient to reproduce like amoeba??

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Lab Rats : Barack Obama

Those unsexy baritones