XML Feed for RxPG News   Add RxPG News Headlines to My Yahoo!   Javascript Syndication for RxPG News

Research Health World General
 
  Home
 
 Latest Research
 Cancer
 Psychiatry
 Genetics
 Surgery
 Aging
 Ophthalmology
 Gynaecology
 Neurosciences
 Pharmacology
 Cardiology
 Obstetrics
 Infectious Diseases
 Respiratory Medicine
 Pathology
 Endocrinology
 Immunology
 Nephrology
 Gastroenterology
 Biotechnology
 Radiology
 Dermatology
 Microbiology
 Haematology
 Dental
 ENT
 Environment
 Embryology
 Orthopedics
 Metabolism
 Anaethesia
 Paediatrics
 Public Health
 Urology
 Musculoskeletal
 Clinical Trials
 Physiology
 Biochemistry
 Cytology
 Traumatology
 Rheumatology
 
 Medical News
 Health
 Opinion
 Healthcare
 Professionals
 Launch
 Awards & Prizes
 
 Careers
 Medical
 Nursing
 Dental
 
 Special Topics
 Euthanasia
 Ethics
 Evolution
  Reproduction
 Odd Medical News
 Feature
 
 World News
 Tsunami
 Epidemics
 Climate
 Business
 
 India
Search

Last Updated: Nov 18, 2006 - 12:32:53 PM

Reproduction Channel
subscribe to Reproduction newsletter

Special Topics : Evolution : Reproduction

   DISCUSS   |   EMAIL   |   PRINT
Dancing ability determines mate quality
Dec 22, 2005 - 5:11:00 AM, Reviewed by: Dr. Priya Saxena

"At least since Darwin, scientists have suspected that dance so often plays a role in courtship because dance quality tracks with mate quality. But this has been hard to study because of the difficulty of isolating dance movements from variables, such as attractiveness, clothing and body features. By using motion-capture technology commonly employed in medical and sports science to isolate dance movements, we can confidently peg dancing ability to desirability."

 
Dance has long been recognized as a signal of courtship in many animal species, including humans. Better dancers presumably attract more mates, or a more desirable mate.

What's seemingly obvious in everyday life, however, has not always been rigorously verified by science. Now, a study by scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, for the first time links dancing ability to established measures of mate quality in humans.

Reporting in Thursday's edition of the British science journal Nature, Rutgers anthropologists collaborating with University of Washington computer scientists describe how they created computer-animated figures that duplicated the movements of 183 Jamaican teenagers dancing to popular music. The researchers then asked peers of the dancers to evaluate the dancing ability of these animated figures. The figures were gender-neutral, faceless and the same size � all to keep evaluators from boosting or dropping dancers' scores based on considerations other than dance moves.

The researchers also evaluated each dancer for body symmetry, an accepted indicator in most animal species � including humans � of how well an organism develops despite problems it encounters as it matures. Symmetry, and its association with attractiveness, therefore indicates an organism's underlying quality as a potential mate. The study showed that higher-rated dancers were typically people with greater body symmetry.

"At least since Darwin, scientists have suspected that dance so often plays a role in courtship because dance quality tracks with mate quality," said Lee Cronk, associate professor of anthropology. "But this has been hard to study because of the difficulty of isolating dance movements from variables, such as attractiveness, clothing and body features. By using motion-capture technology commonly employed in medical and sports science to isolate dance movements, we can confidently peg dancing ability to desirability."

Cronk and postdoctoral research fellow William Brown also examined results by the sex of the dancer. They found that symmetric males received better dance scores than symmetric females and that female evaluators rated symmetric men higher than male evaluators rated symmetric men.

"In species where fathers invest less than mothers in their offspring, females tend to be more selective in mate choice and males therefore invest more in courtship display," Brown said. "Our results with human subjects correlate with that expectation. More symmetrical men put on a better show, and women notice."

The researchers worked with a group of Jamaicans, building on earlier studies of physical symmetry in that population. The test group was ideal for a scientific study of dance, since in Jamaican society, dancing is important in the lives of both sexes. The dancers ranged in age from 14 through 19, and each danced to the same song, popular at the time in Jamaican youth culture. The researchers affixed infrared reflectors on 41 body locations of each dancer, from head-to-toe and arm-to-arm, to capture and measure detailed body movements. They fed data into programs that first created dancing animations of stick figures and then converted those animations into virtual human forms.
 

- Thursday's edition of the British science journal Nature
 

www.rutgers.edu

 
Subscribe to Reproduction Newsletter
E-mail Address:

 

Rutgers researchers involved in the study included Cronk and Brown, along with Robert Trivers, professor of anthropology, and graduate student Amy Jacobson. Also assisting were Zoran Popovic, associate professor, and computer science and engineering graduate students Keith Grochow and Karen Liu, all from the University of Washington.



Related Reproduction News

Infection Status Drives Interspecies Mating Choices in Fruit Fly Females
Why Does Sex Exist?
Declining Human Fertility is Evolutionary Adaptation
Genetic quality of sperm worsens as men get older
Songbirds boost size of eggs when hearing sexy song
Fish have menopause, study determines
Dancing ability determines mate quality
How sense of smell affects mating and aggression


For any corrections of factual information, to contact the editors or to send any medical news or health news press releases, use feedback form

Top of Page

 

© Copyright 2004 onwards by RxPG Medical Solutions Private Limited
Contact Us