By Alok Jha in London
December 23, 2005
SCIENTISTS have confirmed what fans of John Travolta in Saturday
Night Fever have known all along: men with the best dance moves have
the most sex appeal.
The finding lends support to the idea
that dancing is a way to show off high quality genes and good health -
both indicators of a top quality mate.
Charles Darwin was the first to suggest
that dance was a courtship signal in animals, but there had been no
studies of the relation of dance and genetic or physical quality in
humans until now.
In a study published yesterday in the
journal Nature, William Brown, of Rutgers University in New
Jersey, looked at how dancing ability correlated with a person's body
symmetry, a typical measure of the quality of a mate in evolutionary
biology.
Across a wide range of species,
less-symmetric bodies are associated with increased disease and poor
reproductivity.
Professor Brown recorded 183 Jamaicans
strutting their stuff and then presented the results to 155 peers for
evaluation on a dance rating scale.
The body symmetry of the participants was
assessed by matching their elbows, wrists, knees, ankles, feet, ears and
third, fourth and fifth fingers.
Professor Brown found that symmetrical
men were evaluated as significantly better dancers than asymmetric ones.
Likewise, men preferred the dances of symmetrical women, although this
effect was not as marked, suggesting women are more choosy in selecting
mates.
However, the researchers stopped short of
saying why symmetry was so crucial, and said more study was necessary.
"Attractive dances may be more difficult
to perform, more rhythmic, more energetic, more energy-efficient or any
combination of these factors," they write.
"Does dance ability correlate with
reproductive success? We plan to address this question with long-term
data from the same population."
