• Question: how do people atrract eachothe

    Asked by alex11 to Ed, Hayley, Jason, Nathan, Sophie on 18 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Nathan Green

      Nathan Green answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      Animals attract each other in all kind of fun and unusual ways. The main idea is for the male to demonstrate to the female that he is good enough for her to mate with. This can mean dancing around, having big, bright feathers or a long horn or fighting another male. Females want the best genes to go with their own to give their kids the best chance of survival. Humans have evolved a little from this but the basic principles can still apply, like if you’re tall or have nice clothes!

    • Photo: Sophie Holles

      Sophie Holles answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      Nathan is pretty right, but humans have evolved some special ways of attracting each other. There is a theory that our intelligence, use of language and art have evolved by sexual selection, that means if you can demonstrate that you are clever, witty, funny, can produce impressive works of art etc then you are more likely to be attractive to the opposite sex (and in humans it is the females that attract the males as well as the other way around, while in most other species it is just the male eg in birds often the males are colourful and the females are brown, but in humans both males and females can be intelligent, arty etc).

      People are also attracted by appearances, being more symmetrical makes you more attractive, this is because slight stresses during your development make you a little bit asymmetrical, if you have really strong genes then you resist the stresses and stay symmetrical.. so humans have evolved to detect how strong each others genes are by looking at their faces!

      Your body odour is also affected by your immune system via something called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).. the best way to have a super healthy baby is to give it the most diverse immune system as possible so it is protected against the most diseases. So people have evolved to be attracted to the smell of people whose immune system is as different to their own as possible so that their offspring will be strong. They found this out by doing an experiment where people had to sniff dirty t-shirts!

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