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For Hadza, Build and Brawn Don't Matter for Choosing Mates
from Science News
Unlike most Western guys and gals looking for love, Africa's Hadza foragers pair up without regard to each other's size and strength, a new study finds. And that stature-may-care approach underscores the often unappreciated variety of human mating strategies, the researchers say.
Hadza marriages don't tend to consist of individuals with similar heights, weights, body mass indexes, body-fat percentages or grip strengths, say behavioral ecologist Rebecca Sear of the London School of Economics and anthropologist Frank Marlowe of Florida State University in Tallahassee. Neither do Hadza couples feature a disproportionate percentage of husbands taller than their wives, as has been documented in some Western nations, the researchers report in the Oct. 23 Biology Letters. ...
People everywhere seek healthy, fertile marriage partners, Sear proposes. "But I suspect there may not be a preference for one particular signal of health in mates across every population," she says.
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