Sexual Dimorphism In Humans

April 3rd, 2012 by Richard

by Richard

Yeah, okay, the title is a bit dry and pompous, but it did give me a chance to use the word sexual in a title (without stretching too much) and that should drive up the old hit counter.

What I’m talking about is the physical differences between the two sexes. Literally. Men have a penis. Women have a vagina. That sort of things. Sexual dimorphism breaks down like this: di means two; morph means form; and sexual means, well, based on the different sexes. So it means that, depending on the sex, an organism will look one way or the other.

There’s a bunch of sexual dimorphic areas on the human body, but let’s go over one that you might not know about. It’s your fingers. No, seriously, dudes. The fingers.

On average, if you were born a male, your hands are a little bit different from those of someone who was born a female. Most men have a pointer finger that is a little bit shorter than their ring finger. Most women have a pointer finger that’s about the same length as their ring finger, if not a little longer.

from the sex is fun podcast

But, what, Richard, does it all mean?

That’s a darn good question and I’m glad you asked. I first ran across this in a short point on the boingboing.net blog, full of wonderful stuff and some conveniently strange conversations. Including stuff about the “finger thing.”

As far as we know, it don’t mean nothing. Well, that’s not absolutely true.

But it is correlated to a lot of awfully interesting things. In fact, some scientists think “the finger thing” (as I like to call it) is a hallmark of prenatal hormone exposure. Because of that, in the scientific literature, you’ll find lots of examples of studies that try to find a connection between the finger thing and seemingly disparate traits, such as sexual orientation and gender expression.

See, there’s nothing really to it. Just some odd information for you to pull out at the next cocktail party. Sort of like how someone will talk about how women always straighten their fingers to look at the nails while men always bend their fingers and turn their hand so the palm faces them.

The more you know. . . And knowing is half the battle. . .