Evolution's Path May Lead To Shorter, Heavier Women 411
Hugh Pickens writes "Yale University researchers believe that if evolutionary pressures of sexual selection and reproductive fitness continue for another 10 generations, the trends detected in their study may mean that the average woman in 2409 AD will be 2 cm shorter, 1 kg heavier, will bear her first child five months earlier, and enter menopause 10 months later. 'There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans,' says Stephen Stearns of Yale University. 'That's just plain false.' Stearns and his team studied the medical histories of 14,000 residents of the Massachusetts town of Framingham, using medical data from a study going back to 1948 spanning three generations, and found that shorter, heavier women had more children than lighter, taller ones. Women with lower blood pressure and cholesterol were also more likely to have large families as were women who gave birth early or had a late menopause. More importantly, these traits are then passed on to their daughters, who also, on average, had more children. The study has not determined why these factors are linked to reproductive success, but it is likely that they indicate genetic, rather than environmental, effects. 'The evolution that's going on in the Framingham women is like average rates of evolution measured in other plants and animals,' says Stearns. 'These results place humans in the medium-to-slow end of the range of rates observed for other living things.'"
What a headline (Score:4, Funny)
Evolution's Path May Lead To Shorter, Heavier Women
Well, shit. That sucks.
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i, for one, welcome our shorter, heavier overlords ;)
Re:What a headline (Score:4, Funny)
heavier overlords ;)
Heavier ? You do know you are dead now, right ?:P
Preferences (Score:4, Insightful)
It could just be that the Menfolk of Framingham fancy short fat women. Perhaps they're all short and fat as well.
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I heard that stupid people also reproduce more, so clearly all the intelligent people will dry up by 2409 as well!
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:4, Funny)
(stops eating)
Alright. We gotta lick this problem right now. (puts milk back in fridge). Just think of all the money we'll save if we only eat half as much.
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:4, Informative)
I"m not talking about unhealthy thin...but, fit and healthy thing...something like Jennifer Anniston, I mean that lady is 40 and STILL looking hot...or something along the body fitness of Adriana Lima (I think that's her name) of Victoria Secrets. These women are very healthy, no pudging bellies, no cottage cheese thighs...something that looks good with their midriffs showing.
There's a difference between being fit and being anorexic.
Personally, I think it is a matter of social class (Score:4, Interesting)
Tall, thin women also tend to be wealthy, either from having been born into wealth, or from having married into wealth (obviously, they have higher value on the meat market) or from having earned it themselves (if you don't think tall thin women make more than short fat ones, you are kidding yourself).
And, based on many studies I read about in college, wealthy people tend to have fewer children, if any at all. The average was something like 1.1 per family I think.
Poor people, on the other hand, breed like rabbits. The average I read was close to 6 per family. And here's the kicker: in western culture (not just America) the abundance of cheap fattening food combined with jobs that are not physically intensive means the poor can get fat. Once-upon-a-time the poor were all farmers and therefore got enough exercise to stay thin. Now the poor all work in retail (or similar) and can get quite fat.
So, yes, the trend will be for short-fat women. But the trend in rich families will still be for tall, thin women.
I wonder if our race will bifurcate into two separate species someday.
Re:Personally, I think it is a matter of social cl (Score:3, Interesting)
Poor people, on the other hand, breed like rabbits. The average I read was close to 6 per family.
You should consider reading something that actually quotes facts someday, instead of Rush Limbaugh, or whoever it is you get your made-up facts from.
So, yes, the trend will be for short-fat women. But the trend in rich families will still be for tall, thin women. I wonder if our race will bifurcate into two separate species someday.
No, by the logic you just quoted, the fat women are fat because they're poor-- you just told me that the fatness was because of "the abundance of cheap fattening food combined with jobs that are not physically intensive means the poor can get fat. " That's not hereditary.
In any case, the birth statistics you quoted imply that the "tall, thin, rich" women die
Re:Personally, I think it is a matter of social cl (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no need to bring Rush Limbaugh into this.
It's not universally true, but it is more or less an accepted fact.
Fertility rates are inversely proportional to income.
In the modern world there are a lot of reasons for this. The rich tend to have access to better education. therefore, they tend to try to start a career before a family (illustrated in comedic fashion by the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy). Then with their career dominating their lives, they usually only have a couple kids at the most.
More wealthy folks have better access to birth control. Again, better education plays into this. On the extreme end of the spectrum, you have folks who have superstitious beliefs. That doesn't help keep their fertility rates down any...
Economists and demographers have known about this correlation for centuries. And it's interesting because it goes across religions, across nationalities, race, and other factors. Poor Americans are just as likely to have a higher fertility rate as poor French, or Japanese. Poor Nigerians or Indians are even more likely because a poor American is fairly well off by Nigerian standards.
Side Rant: The Israelis in particular are worried about this effect because Israel is a democracy. And the Israeli Palestinians have a fertility rate several times that of Israeli Jews. Again, the average Israeli Palestinian is much poorer than the average Israeli Jew.
The Israelis are concerned because with the higher fertility rates of the Palestinian Israeli citizens, the Palestinians may become a majority in the "Jewish State" in a couple generations. This brings up all kinds of moral dilemmas for the Israeli government, who must try to balance it's commitment to a homeland for the Jews to it's commitment to democracy for all it's citizens.
A few minutes of on the Google came up with these:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14744915 [economist.com]
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164483 [economist.com]
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/177/8/846/F19 [www.cmaj.ca]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility [wikipedia.org]
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=67&v2=31&y=2004 [indexmundi.com]
Also, I have no idea why you brought Rush Limbaugh into this. I'm about as progressive a character as you're likely to meet. I don't know anyone that disputes this data.
Cause is another matter. Progressives would tend to contend that the reason is education, the nature of pre-industrialized societies, higher mortality rates among poor nations, the tempo of life in wealthy nations and classes.
And Rush would say they all want their welfare checks or something.
You're right about the lack of heredity for short-fatness though. It is environmental / cultural, not genetic.
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He's specifically talking about the USA. It's much easier to buy Little Debbies at Walmart than to buy the proper food at Whole Foods (i.e. "whole paycheck"). Part of what makes civilization work is easy, cheap access to stored grain products... exactly what makes you fat. Rich folks have access to better quality food, they drink half-caf-soy-lattes instead of Coke, they get hour+ lunch times to eat nicely prepared salads, not 30 minutes drive-thru... ect, etc. They also get discounts for those expensive
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Idiocracy is classist bullshit that comforts rich wankers who desperately want to believe that they're rich because of some inherent superiority
The part that I find most humorous about this fact is that our DNA doesn't care what we do for a living or how big our houses are. It doesn't care how intelligent we are either. The goal of our DNA is procreation. So if the rich have fewer children than the poor, then the rich are, by definition, genetically inferior to the poor, and it is natural selection that makes them a minority.
Funnier yet, it is the rich who can afford to have the most children, so the poor are beating them despite having a severe ha
Re:Idiocracy is classist bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Your facts are less correct than they were 50 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html [nytimes.com]
"The movement of families up and down the economic ladder is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. But it does not seem to be happening quite as often as it used to."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4662456 [npr.org]
Eighty percent of Americans still believe it's possible to pull yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps. That's according to a New York Times poll reported last week, but a recent mobility study suggests the American Dream may be more style than substance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility [wikipedia.org]
Upper nonmanual occupations have the highest level of occupational inheritance. [3]
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/27/news/companies/lashinsky_hurd.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009030310 [cnn.com]
As his father did before him, Hurd attended the Browning School - a prestigious all-boys school where classmate Jamie Dimon, now CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, remembers seventh-grader Hurd as a good basketball player
The wealthy own the media and push the "you could be wealthy!" idea hard. It helps keep the lower class folks voting against their own self interests. It's why the wizard of wall street pays a lower tax rate on his monumental earnings than his secretary pays on her salary.
There is a tiny chance you will break into the wealthy classes. But, for the most part, they pass the good jobs down to their own. Just look at the way hollywood has been taken over by 2nd and 3rd generation actors. CEO jobs are less obvious but essentially the same.
Any idiot can bankrupt themselves-- but it takes a lot more than simple hard work to get into the executive class.
Re:Idiocracy is classist bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Class is relatively fixed, do not confuse some dynamic movement in income as social mobility, most people behave like atoms in gas.
Are the atoms in a gas fixed? I'm sorry, but the article you've cited does a poor job of supporting that idea. On the other hand, according to this [wikipedia.org]
Which means that children in the lowest 1/5 of households have an even shot at moving halfway across the class spectrum. It may not be a perfect meritocracy, but it's no caste system, either.
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Except most people today are moving from ABSOLUTE poverty to a developed nation poor, does not mean that classes will not solidify over time as the rest of the world becomes fully developed like the west.
In the west we have a reversing trend, more people are getting poorer.
Social mobility cuts both ways (i.e. person in developed country gets job, x amount of workers lose their jobs in USA/Canada, Europe).
And considering the amount of underemployed unviersity educated people in the USA and Canada it's quite
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"Half way" means nothing when 10% of the people own 90% of the wealth.
It does mean that the classes aren't fixed - and that was the only claim I was making.
Unsound extrapolation (Score:5, Insightful)
Giving birth earlier and later menopause all sound like things that would improve selective fitness... but the question is, if they really are selected for, why weren't they selected for five thousand years ago? (Lower blood pressure and lower chloresterol are two that I can understand perhaps a little better-- the problems with heart trouble may have not been quite so much of a problem ten generations ago, when most humans did a lot more physical exercise just to stay alive).
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well... their extrapolation for the entire species as it stands is worthless, but their prediction of the path of evolution for this town certainly has merit....
Note to self... move family far from framingham so my great great great great great great great great grand children do not have only short fat women to date.
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First, modern humans have been in our current form for something like ten thousand generations
We obviously haven't grow wings lately, but it would be a mistake to think we haven't changed at all. A rather substantial number of genes have been identified as having been selected during the last several tens of thousands of years, and in fact quite a few genes have been identified undergoing current positive or negative selection. A simple case is something like lactose tolerance which has been independently e
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I was going to post a similar comment, but it occured to me that much of the observed height difference between different groups of humans (except pygmies?) arise from differences in nutrition.
The average Caucasian height was about the same 300 years ago.
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The average Caucasian height was about the same 300 years ago.
According to this [wikipedia.org], the average United States citizen has gained 5cm since the mid 19th century.
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Thanks,
I guess I left out some words.
Here's a good article...
http://www.plimoth.org/discover/myth/4-ft-2.php [plimoth.org]
where it says, in part:
---
The average height for an early 17th-century English man was approximately 5' 6". For 17th-century English women, it was about 5' ½". While average heights in England remained virtually unchanged in the 17th and 18th centuries, American colonists grew taller. Averages for modern Americans are just over 5' 9" for men, and about 5' 3 ¾" for women. The main reasons for
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ten generations is trivial
Hardly. Over the ten-thousand generations of which you speak how many of those had the ability to inter-racially marry and produce off-spring? How many of those went through an extremely rapid sea-change of moral thought through commercialisation and profiteering media companies with global reach?
I think the next 3 generations will see the greatest changes known to man.
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Seriously, though, the logic is sound and the current population trends [census.gov] are clear.
Did they stop to consider the possibility that the men were part of this equation?
Could the same results be seen if it turned out that a higher than average percentage of tall slender men turned out to be gay?
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:4, Insightful)
2) A few generations of people doing what you say and you might have a breed of humans more likely to rape.
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A "breed" of humans with a genetic propensity towards violence and lawlessness... I hope no one mentions the elephant in the middle of the room.
That's right. Pit bulls.
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Don't feed shieldwolf when he's off his meds, it will only encourage him to continue not taking them.
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:5, Funny)
>>>If you don't like it, go rape some tall and skinny women into pregnancy, and ensure the children survive to perpetuate the cycle.
C'mon we're geeks No need for such crudities:
- Donate sperm to a bunch of banks (this should be easy for us)
- Hack the computer and replace your specs with some hot-looking guy's specs
- Unsuspecting women pick the man of their dreams, and instead get your sperm.
- Eighteen years later these women will be wondering why their kids look like Bill Gates instead of Tom Cruise
- ???
- Profit (genetically speaking)
Re:Population trends and the direction of evolutio (Score:5, Funny)
Already done. I have something on the order of 5,000 children, who will be tall, skinny, and insanely intelligent. I've also created 3 biological children (the old fashion way). One girl, two boys. They're all tall, skinny, and intelligent. They'll all likely be hackers and/or megalomaniacs. The next world wars will be between my own children. :) As it continues, the biological children count should increase, as there are many tall skinny attractive intelligent women who are courting me to be their mate. :)
I've done my part to improve humanity through unnatural selection. It's up to the rest of you to do your parts. You short fat idiots need not attempt it. :)
Idocracy (Score:2)
Evolution would just mean that whomever has the most children (that survive to also make children) becomes the dominant (in numbers) body type.
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[T]here's nothing wrong with observing trends like "less intelligent people have tons of babies."
Actually, there is something wrong with observing false trends.
Re:Idocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also something wrong with spouting forth conclusions and condemning the opposing viewpoint as being idiotic without citing any evidence (which makes this [xkcd.com] somewhat ironic, I guess).
The Wikipedia article on the subject [wikipedia.org] is convoluted and doesn't really offer any strong conclusions, but at least some studies reported in the article have suggested a small negative correlation between intelligence and fertility (i.e., number of offspring), and another study showed a strong negative correlation between education and fertility (and education is sometimes used as a proxy for measuring intelligence). There's also a well-known negative correlation between economic well-being and fertility which may be related.
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It may well be true that extremely bright people are generally less successful breeders... you can blame that on social awkwardness or indifference or whatever, it doesn't matter.
Humans are SMART. I don't think there is any doubt we have the best general intelligence on the planet, and evolution got us to that state. I'd bet that people who are _slightly_ more intelligent than average are better breeders, because there seems to be a very long term pressure for smarter people.
Of course, we don't know where
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Note that the GP's fertility measures is just average number of offspring. This is probably just due to the well known fact that the better educated and the rich often choose to have fewer children. I seriously doubt awkwardness has anything to do with it.
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don't forget the negative correlation between intelligence and penis size.
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There's much room to reduce birth rates without enforcement by force: http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/the-eus-baby-blues-birth-rates-in-the-european-union-are-falling-fast/ [wordpress.com]
Re:Idocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Give that idiocracy shit a rest. It's not genetically dumber people who make more children, it's people lower on the social scale. As in, people in ghettos and immigrants. Poor education and poor nutrition (both which cause lower IQs) aren't genetically hereditary.
So-called smart people always confuse uneducated people with less intelligent people. Maybe they're not that smart after all.
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One of the principal lacts of their evil is to sponsor a media-culture that gets ordinary schmucks like yourself to identify emotionally with them, aspire to their condition, and to assume an attack on the values of the truly rich to be a personal threat to your own status and mobility. You are also trained to revile those perceived as less fortunate/gifted as yourself - never suspecting that to the real rich, the difference between you and the homeless doesn't amount to a rounding error.
Hallelujah. Which
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It is also their job to go out of business, when they fail. But they have so many moles in your government (Geithner, Obama, etc.) that you will bail them out for the next 80 years - as they pay themselves bonuses off of your children's former college fund.
You need to look up the definition of "Stockholm Syndrome" - then look hard in the mirror at yourself.
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Interesting! The thing about such debates is that all arguments are based on assumptions, assumptions which are difficult to verify. I'd be interested to see anything close to a graph showing the distribution of offsprings depending on household income/education btw!
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Evolution would just mean that whomever has the most children (that survive to also make children) becomes the dominant (in numbers) body type.
Yes, that is how evolution works.
But run this same study in other places and maybe you get a different result. It could be that in Framingham the people that want to reproduce the most happen to be shorter. Or maybe there is something about being a bit shorter that opens up more mating possibilities. And the heavier part needs a bit more investigation, because people that have a lot of kids usually don't lose all the weight after the pregnancy.
There is a very complicated cultural interplay that is part o
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Evolution would just mean that whomever has the most children (that survive to also make children) becomes the dominant (in numbers) body type.
Not entirely, in you're assuming that nothing would change during this period, and that just because mother A got 5 children, so will daughter A, but of course it would as evolution itself is caused by change. It is true that evolution ultimately depends on offspring, but you can't neglect the path to having and raising that offspring. These are all events heavily based on environmental factors, and your second mistake is that evolution in our case depends on second set of genes -- our partners. You can't a
Reproductive "success" is not genetic. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think evolutionary change is being stifled by both medicine and civilization. Reproductive "success" is not genetic anymore, its based on social factors. The goal of most humans is no longer to spawn the most progeny.
I come from a small backwoods town and women in these areas (e.g. low income, low education) have more children, and have them at a younger age. ( This is a generalization, no anecdotes please. And no I don't feel like looking up stats, maybe someone else can post some).
Also, regardless of the details, I hope TFA is wrong. Have you seen dwarven females?
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But social factors have at least some roots in genetics (blah blah blah nature vs nurture, well guess what, it isn't 100% of either one).
Also, reproductive rates over 2 or 3 generations may not be particularly meaningful over the long term (if those people are dying substantially faster or whatever).
(read the summary carefully, 1 kg and 2 cm isn't much to worry about, there will still be plenty of taller and leaner women after those changes)
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You might want to think things through a bit more, as your preliminary paragraph displays a very incorrect view of how selection operates. Whoever make
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Alrighty Then (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. I had no idea when I went to sleep last night that I would wake up against Evolution. Where's the ID/Creationism Kool-Aid? Comin' on board... make some room.
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Creationists believe in Natural Selection. They just don't believe that molecules turned into a man. They don't believe that anyone has proven a mutation that resulted in better DNA. Sometimes the result might be better (resistance to medicine or freezing), but the DNA is more corrupt overall.
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I have a horrible, horrible idea for you:
ID/Creationism will not ever change basic facts. You can only look away. The hammer will hit you anyway.
So do you really want to look away, and lose your only chance to change something? ^^
Ok, sorry... in case you are a stone with no own ability to change anything, then of course I did not want to offend you, and am an insensitive clod. :P
Soooo..... the typical American woman (Score:4, Funny)
Heavier.
And people say we americans are falling behind. We're just 500 years ahead and all the rest of ye are catching up. ;-)#
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Nope. Typical Framingham woman. Biiig difference!
.
.
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That'll make $500 then. Thank you for using our Hurricane(78) (emotional) relief services!
Fat Americans Breed Fat Americans! Film at 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
Change the diet, and you'll see the "trend" reverse.
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I doubt it. It probably reflects the fact that skinny women are less fit hosts for a fetus than heavier women. At some point, you run into high weight causing health issues that also make the woman a less fit incubator.
Earlier maturity and later menopause extend the fertility period (duh)... in times past women needed more time to build up a healthy body to have children, and there was no genetic point in delaying menopause since pregnancies towards the end of female fertility were less likely to be viabl
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If women are maturing earlier, then maybe the age of aduthood should be lowered from 18 to 17 (or 17 downto 16 in Denmark).
Also I'm not convinced that thinner == less capable of carrying children. I would think the exact-opposite since the thin women I've known had "easy" pregnancies with quick labor, while the heavier women had more difficult, painful times.
Re:Fat Americans Breed Fat Americans! Film at 11 (Score:5, Informative)
Any GP or OB/GYN will tell you that there is a minimum percentage of body fat below which a woman won't even menstruate.
They'll also tell you a woman should gain some weight during pregnancy, and that generally speaking the outcome of the pregnancy is better if a certain amount of weight is gained (unless the woman is already overweight, of course).
Again, I don't think they're saying thinner = bad, I think they're saying the population is shifting towards the optimum range. Skinny women have less, and less healthy children on average, so the average weight is rising by a small amount as they're outbred by heavier women.
There will be an upper limit to this effect as well - morbid obesity is not a good thing for getting or being pregnant, either.
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Since the "heavier" women we're talking about are averaging 1 kg heavier, and the "shorter" ones average 2.5 cm shorter, I'd think you'd have a hard time sorting out the "shorter, heavier" ones from the "taller, lighter" ones being talked about in this study.
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skinny women are less fit hosts for a fetus than heavier women
Maybe they've got cause and effect the wrong way round. Maybe after the first baby, the women in this study put on weight. Women who didn't have children didn't gain weight so skewed the samples and results?
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The women who bore children also got shorter, apparently.
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Genetics understanding fail. Diet doesn't change your genes.
Well actually... if everybody has a fattening diet, making people genetically predisposed to obesity more likely to become obese out of proportions, and that such obscenely obese people are more likely to die alone (without any offsprings) (wild assumption, I'm not sure that's true), then wouldn't that be an evolutionary pressure to get rid of people who get fat easily?
This is already happining in the Midwest. (Score:3, Funny)
Here in Illinois, we just call them "corn fed". I had just assumed it was the climate.
makes one wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/07/27/1455253 [slashdot.org]
is shorter and heavier "more beautiful"?
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36-24-36? (Score:5, Funny)
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... a scratch-a-scratch.
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I never thought I'd see the day when Sir Mix-a-Lot got a +5 Insightful on /.
I disagree (Score:2)
1 study in 1 small town? (Score:2)
The traits described probably have more to do with proximity to the local McDonalds, than anythiing about "survival of the fa^Hittest"
Re:1 study in 1 small town? (Score:4, Informative)
Framingham is not America and America is not the world. While this report might hold true for a statistically insignificant group in one country, it tells us nothing about human evolution over the whole planet.
The traits described probably have more to do with proximity to the local McDonalds, than anythiing about "survival of the fa^Hittest"
Only blame the summary. Stearns made no such generalization.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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It depends on whether attraction to slimness (and big breasts, for that matter) have some other underlying benefit. For example, breasts tend to get bigger after a woman's first child, so perhaps men who favor flatter stomachs and bigger breasts are looking for women who are fertile yet not currently pregnant. While all sorts of societal factors would complicate that translating into reproductive success for such women, there would still be an underlying pressure that could push towards an equilibrium tha
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Also there is a trend of finding slimmer women more attractive. In the past this ment that those would be having more children. However with the pill and other contraceptives, it looks as if the most attractive (in a biological way) females have LESS babies.
It's not quite as simple as that. As I've grown older (my 30s) I've discovered (the perhaps obvious fact) that "slimness" is largely a function of age. It amazes me how easy it is for my early-20s colleagues to stay skinny while drinking corn syrup a
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You've basically answered your own question. There's lots of hot women in Manhattan, and none in Appalachia, and it's because of exercise. To get around in Manhattan, unless you have a limo or cab take you door-to-door everywhere (that gets expensive quick), you take the subway, and walk many blocks between your destinations and the subway stations. I've spent a couple of weeks there: being a Manhattan citizen means lots of walking, lots more than a typical suburban American does. I haven't been to Euro
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Re:What will be the impact of docters (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that is actually not at all the results they got. They studied weight, etc. *after* they had babies.
They did not find that slimmer women end up having more babies. To do that, they'd have to take all of these measures *before* women had children and compare that to their future success. Because of the way they measured, what they *actually* found was that women who have more children end up fatter.
That doesn't sell the papers, though.
Unconvincing. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not convinced by these researchers' claims. Is there a trend towards people getting shorter? I thought the opposite was true. As for obesity, that's another story. But what I am convinced this reflects is not an evolutionary trend but rather a socioeconomic one. The better off people are the less likely they are to have children. So poorer people are the ones having children and unlike most of the rest of the world lower-class Americans are very likely to be obese. Do this study in parts of Asia or Africa and these researchers would be saying the trend was towards thinner humans. The US actually bucks the trend established by most developed nations in that many people still tend to have a few children, in Europe and Asia you're lucky if they have one. I'm not sure why there would be a shift towards bearing children sooner considering most people seem to be waiting longer to have kids. Again, it might simply be a reflection class.
That seems like a big assumption to me given how many variables exist. An interesting thing a gynecologist told me a couple of years ago was that obese women tend do deprive the fetus of nutrients more so than your average women, so they tend to have underweight babies far more frequently. So this evolutionary tend doesn't seem like a particularly good thing to me. But then there are so many variables affecting humanity that these findings are likely meaningless.
ignoring curvature and rumble (Score:2)
Normally you'd expect the psychology of priming to catch this one: a linear extrapolation is worthless when medical technology continues to change as fast as it does. Diabetes continues to exist in 50 years? On the near side of the apocalypse? I highly doubt it. Excepting curvature, we can thus conclude that women are getting fatter.
Some people see this phase we're in where the genomics/proteomics researchers are discovering that nothing is as simple as we told the investors as evidence that progress in
Sure you can find more trends (Score:2)
Here's another one for you. Genetically slutty women had more children than genetically prude women. Therefore, women are now genetically easier to get with than they used to be. Discuss.
Essentially reporting the obvious I should think (Score:2)
It would be nice if evolution were driven by our ideals, but our ideals are not conducive to evolutionary drives and mechanisms which effectively boil down to "who gets laid more" and who don't.
In the western U.S., I think the situation is only slightly more complex than described, but I can't disagree with its general assertions. However, some of this is somewhat regional. This should be expanded to include other nations. The short-fat thing in other nations and cultures don't work the same way as they
TFS makes idiotic assumptions. (Score:2)
TFS makes the assumption, that because the people in Framingham are like that, that the whole world must be like that.
Which of course, is total bullshit. This study is only meaningful for Framingham. If you want it to have a global meaning, do it globally.
I don't understand how someone can create that assumption, and absolutely not notice its wrongness...
Nasty, brutish and short (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't Thomas Hobbes argue that in the state of nature "the wife of man is solitary, nasty, brutish, and short." Or have I misquoted somehow?
But not in the Netherlands (Score:2, Interesting)
In the Netherlands people marry rather late, and many women get their kids in their (late) thirties. A good portion of women of that age miss the boat. There is an enormous selection pressure going on. Ignoring the emerging trend of freezing eggs, one may expect that in a couple of generations Dutch women will be able to bear children at even older age, and may well live even longer than they do now.
Bert
Shorter eh? Obviously never been to Holland (Score:5, Funny)
There are PLENTY of women here close to or over 2 meters. Do you know how hard it is to stare down at a woman's tits when they are above you? I got to carry a stepladder around JUST so I can I look down on women.
Troll (Score:3, Interesting)
Dear Sir/Madam,
Evolution doesn't work that way. You're talking about genetic drift, which is not the same.
Kthxbai
my wife (Score:5, Funny)
Shit. My wife comes from future!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If anything ever needed to be posted anonymously...
Been nice knowing you.
Tee hee... (Score:5, Funny)
Yo mama is so evolved...
My wife (Score:3, Funny)
My wife is 4'9" and we just had our first child. We are both engineers, and I'm none too tall myself.
I think we might as well save them the trouble and name our next child Nali Mekkatorque and just get the Gnome race started.
Re:Where is the evolution? (Score:4, Funny)
Symmetry plays a large role in physiology, so it would be very unlikely to see an evolutionary step that leads to 3 boobs. Lateral symmetry dictates that you'd be more likely to see 4 or 6 before that.
There is the possibility of radial symmetry kicking in and getting a non-even number of boobs, but that's just weird.
Re: (Score:2)
( . )( . )( . )
Symmetrical on the middle nipple.
What makes it more likely to see 4 or 6 is that other mammals already do.
Re: (Score:2)
What the heck?
(shrug). Some women like Lily Allen have 4 nipples... but I'm not aware of any that have 4 boobs. It appears the trend is for the same number as now (2) but with larger sizes, with the typical American woman already one cup larger than the 1970s. I consider this bad. Yes it makes logical sense that more food == bigger body parts, but I personally find larger breasts unattractive.
Re: (Score:2)
There was once an experiment to breed sheep with more teats. It was a failure, not because they failed to get another pair of milk-producing teats, but because the sheep rudely refused to produce bigger litters of offspring to make use of the new milk taps.
It's probably not too difficult to genetically engineer a four-breasted woman (nature often produces people with additional nipples below the normal ones) but it won't happen due to medical research and experimentation ethics. Also, you'd be creating a
Re: (Score:2)
Why you could still have a third boob right dead in the middle. Still symmetric. If that didn't work that way, imagine that, we'd probably have two penises and women would have two vaginas.
Although now that I think of it it does sound good!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Reproductive selection will always operate, it is just that the ''selection criteria'' may change, physical fitness may no longer be so important, supplanted by taking advantage of social security/... to enable them to have more children than they can support by the ''sweat of their own brows'', the government picks up the bill.
To quote Monty Python: "Look at them bloody Catholics, filling up the bloody world with children they can't afford to bloody feed." At least, I assume that's what you were referring to.
But seriously, the idea of a "welfare queen" is a myth (and typically a racist one at that). The vast majority of welfare recipients are trying to work, are unable to, but find work within about 2 years. Among other things, the per-child benefit that is given via WIC, TANF, and food stamps doesn't completely cover the cost of
history is not a myth (Score:3, Informative)
Also careful shopping can reduce food cost far below average. I've been hiring 2-3 low wage earners/week this year and I notice they spe
Re: (Score:2)
it's birth control that we should blame for the study's results!
Probably birth control is playing a big role. I predict that in two centuries most people will be descended from those who wanted children or had bad impulse control. Probably we'll have a more religious population (religion tends to correlate with fertility in western societies).
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but the level of impulse control required not to have kids dropped significantly. It used to be that to avoid having kids you had to be celibate, and that's very hard. Now you have to go get contraceptives, which is a lot easier.