I was surfing the Internets the other day and came across an interesting paper on semen (hey, that’s just how I roll – randomly coming across papers on semen ^_~). What was neat about this paper was that a link was found between men’s scores on intelligence tests and the quality of their semen (how concentrated their sperm was in one squirt and how well they swam). This suggests that intelligence counts as a fitness factor – i.e. being clever makes you seem healthy and will make ladies want to do you.
Which actually makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective because we humans selected for intelligence in our ancestry – which is why we’re smarter than, you know, a mouse and have really big heads.
It makes sense for a bunch of attractive traits to be associated with each other too – like intelligence, cardiovascular health, longevity, and now sperm health/count – because these are all good features in a mate that we’d want to pass on to our kids. PLUS the best way to pass on these traits is through good sperms!
Since we find intelligence sexy* - it follows that men who are intelligent should also be pretty virile and able to make lots of smart little babies. Neat!
And that is your interesting, yet random, sexy science fact for today. ^_^
[*Obviously there are cases when intelligence isn't sexy, like when the person is also arrogant or generally a dick, or spends too much time being smart and not enough time developing the other factors that make him attractive. We're just talking really generally here people.]
