TALL men have more children than their shorter friends鈥攂ecause they
have more wives, a pair of researchers have found. They say that could lead to
an evolutionary trend towards ever taller men, because height is estimated to be
up to 90 per cent genetic.
Ulrich Mueller from the University of Marburg in Germany and his colleague
Allan Mazur from Syracuse University, New York, studied a group of men who
graduated in 1950 from the US military academy at West Point. They found that
the taller men in the class tended to have more children, no matter what their
rank. Taller men were also more likely to get divorced and remarry, and there
was a good chance that their second wife would be younger than the first. The
researchers will report the findings in a future issue of Behavioural Ecology
and Sociobiology.
鈥淭he more attractive a man is, the more chance he gets to destroy his first
marriage,鈥� says Mazur. 鈥淭allness is pretty much universally attractive. I don鈥檛
know why.鈥� Other studies have shown that tall men are often more successful in
the workplace, and can appear more intimidating to potential aggressors. But
these advantages may be more imagined than real, Mazur says. It鈥檚 still not
known if women are making a logical decision by preferring taller men, he
adds.
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John Lazarus of the Evolution and Behaviour Research Group at the University
of Newcastle upon Tyne says the preference is probably a hangover from our
distant ancestors. 鈥淚t鈥檚 pretty irrelevant in current lifestyles,鈥� he says. 鈥淥ne
has to be careful in making an evolutionary interpretation from just one or two
modern studies.鈥� Dan Terp of the Tall Club of New York City is also sceptical
about whether tall men marry more often. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 see a lot of divorces in the
Tall Club crowd,鈥� he points out.