Youth is the time when hearts are large
Sexual selection is a variant of natural selection in which one gender prefers certain traits be present in their mate. Thus individuals with those attractive traits will have a high reproductive success, spreading their genes (and the trait) through the population.
This can also cause the attractive trait to become greatly exaggerated, so as to exploit the other gender’s preference for it. This is the process which resulted in the large, elaborate tails of peacocks.
Given the influence sexual selection can have on a population, researchers started to wonder if there were any traits in humans that were the product of mate-choice preferences. (…)
Women, it would seem, look for men who are taller than they are (but only by ~9%) and with a good covering of chest hair. Men look for women who are shorter and with a 0.7 waist-hip ratio (i.e. the waist is 70% the width of the hip).
Curiously, women also liked men having a specific waist-hip ratio. Even more curiously, they liked the same (0.7) figure men liked.
