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You might credit the legendary Scottish male virility of past time to single malt whiskey, or the sometimes brutal weather, or the fact that haggis is the national dish, but a Dutch researcher is proposing another answer:

Chuck Burton / AP

"Men wearing a kilt experience a strong sense of freedom and masculinity," says a researcher. Here Tim Propst, of Lincoln County, N.C., throws a hammer during the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in Linville, N.C. in July 2012.

It was the kilts.

Kilts, worn as they were meant to be worn, without underwear, lets our laddies swing freely in the breeze, creating, according to researcher Erwin Kompanje, the “ideal physiological scrotal environment.” Exposed to the bracing Highland coolness, testicles will make robust sperm.

The modern man’s “scrotal environment” is pretty confined these days, what with underwear and pants that hold our testicles close to the body and its 98.6-degree heat, Kompanje, a senior researcher in the department of intensive care at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, told NBCNews.com. But as he pointed out in a paper published online in the Scottish Medical Journal, “adequate spermatogenesis requires a temperature about 3 degrees [Celsius] lower than normal body temperature.” (That would translate to about 93 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to the normal body temperature of 98.6 Farenheit.)

Testicular temperature is regulated by the cremaster muscle – the muscle that covers the testicles -- that raises and lowers the scrotum in response to heat and cold. “The cremaster reflex only works, and has any sense, when the scrotum is hanging free,” Kompanje said. “In tight trousers it cannot work. In a naked man, or a man wearing a kilt, it can and will.”

Kompanje stresses that he’s only proposing a hypothesis based partly on his own fascination with things Scottish – he sometimes wears a kilt for special ceremonial occasions – and anecdotal evidence that kilt-wearing is good for sperm, and scientific evidence that sperm production wilts under high scrotal temperatures.

“I searched the scientific literature, and I found nothing on the subject,” he said. “Then I searched on sperm quality and found many scientific papers related to high scrotal temperature and tight clothing. So as 1+1=2, I formed the hypothesis that wearing a skirt-like garment (as a kilt) without underwear would help to improve sperm quality.”

There’s been a lot of debate in science about whether modern western men have poorer sperm quality and fewer sperm overall than they did 50 or 100 years ago. Environmental toxins, stress, smoking, diet, have all been implicated in the decline.

Temperature is often blamed, too, which is why doctors advise men not to put laptop computers on their laps. When doctors in Germany experimented with a “nocturnal scrotal cooling” device – crotch air conditioning – in men with fertility problems, they found “a significant increase in sperm concentration and total sperm count…after 8 weeks” according to a 2005 journal article.

So Kompanje may well be correct when he proposes kilt wearing as a possible solution to dropping sperm quality.

This raises the question, however, of whether a man wearing a kilt will get any opportunities to send his swimmers into the pool.  

Kompanje isn’t worried. “I found literature, and I have experienced this myself, that women like to see a man wearing a kilt. It can be very masculine and sexy.”    

“Wearing a kilt has strong psychological benefits,” he writes in his journal article. “A kilt will get you noticed no matter where you are. Research indicates that men wearing a kilt experience a strong sense of freedom and masculinity…The kilt gives a man a sensuous awareness of his own body and how it will be seen by others.”

Kompanje acknowledges there’s no proof testicles will be happier under kilts, so he proposes a controlled trial with regular scrotum temperature taking and sperm quality monitoring of some men wearing pants and others wearing kilts. One incentive to volunteer might be what Kompanje argues is the “positive attention from sexual admirers” associated with kilts.

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young Ph.D., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com), now on sale.

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Diego Cervo / featurepics.com

What's the sweatiest part of your body? It's not your armpits--it's your upper back, according to a new study from the University of Loughborough. The least sweaty regions? Your hands, fingers, and feet.

Sweat may soak your tee and make you smell sour, but it's also a useful part of your body's response to exercise. When sweat evaporates, it takes heat away from the body, keeping you cool. Aside from the smell, sweat is more friend than foe. Here's how to work with it--not against it. (For more ways to improve your workout, check out the 100 Best Fitness Tips of All Time.)

1. Tuck in Your Shirt
One way to increase evaporation and thereby reduce sweat is to tuck in your shirt and allow a gap between your shirt and skin. Doing this will create a pocket of air against your skin that helps sweat evaporate and your body cool.

2. Wipe Your Brow, Not Your Body
As sweat only helps cool the body when it evaporates on the skin, it may seem like wiping it off is a bad idea. "Theoretically, it is," Ollie Jay, Ph.D., principal investigator at the Thermal Ergonomics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa, tells MensHealth.com. "But picking up forehead sweat with a towel is not a big deal. The sweat produced on your forehead compared to the rest of your body is pretty minimal."

3. Step on the Scale
A good rule of thumb is to drink as much fluid as your body generates in sweat. "Typically we suggest that people who exercise a lot in the heat should look at their body weight before and after the exercise," study author George Havenith, of the University of Loughborough, tells MensHealth.com. "That is an estimate of what they lost in sweat and that is what they need to drink." (One pound is about 16 ounces of fluid.) Your body can only absorb up to 32 ounces per hour, so no need to chug gallons at a time.

4. Treat Your Pits Like Dirty Paws
Armpit and groin sweat originate in apocrine sweat glands--as opposed to eccrine sweat glands found everywhere else. Apocrine glands infuse normal sweat with proteins, and are located in the least evaporative areas of the body. This thicker sweat gathers in your pits and groin, and starts to stink. If you can't shower, try using hand sanitizer on your affected areas. It will kill the bacteria and give you a few more odor-free hours.

5. Exercise Your Sweat Glands
If your body temperature is often elevated above your resting temperature, your body will learn to be more efficient in creating sweat. Whether you're training longer or living in a hot environment, your body will adapt. Scientists haven't found a link between ethnicity and sweat response, says Jay, but they have found regional adaptations. Ready to sweat? Check out The NEW Spartacus Workout on DVD!

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There’s no pill or cream to cure baldness yet, but researchers may be getting closer.

Scientists have discovered that vitamin D seems to awaken the receptors in the hair follicles that shut down in hair loss, giving doctors hope that there could some day be a cure.

“It’s how the vitamin D is being handled by the receptors in the follicles that may be part of the puzzle of why we begin to lose our hair as we get older,” Dr. Marc Avram, a professor of dermatology at New York’s Weill Cornell Medical College, told TODAY. “In the next few years, we will have many other options that ultimately one day will make hair loss a voluntary thing.”

Today, more than half of men over age 50 suffer from hair loss. And while notable actors and athletes have embraced the bald look in recent years, not everyone loves their “chrome dome.”

Doctors perform more than 100,000 hair replacement operations a year, at an average cost of between $8,000 and $12,000.

"What I see in my patients is when we can restore the hair, not only does it make them feel better about themselves but it restores their self-confidence,” Dr. Marc Dauer, a hair transplant specialist in Los Angeles. “This research that we've come up with is fantastic news for us.”

Dr. Susan Taylor, a dermatologist, told TODAY that baldness can occur when the hair’s sleep phase, which is only supposed to last weeks or months, becomes permanent as the follicle goes to sleep for good.

Scientists have found that vitamin D is the key that fits into the lock of the follicle receptor, said Taylor. “That seems to cause hair to grow and can help generate stem cells, cells that can turn into follicles,” she told TODAY’s Matt Lauer.

While drugs like Propecia and Rogaine prevent further hair loss, Taylor said the hope is that new treatments will turn the receptors on and allow hair to grow again on a bald scalp.

That led Lauer to inquire if men will soon be using a vitamin D ointment or taking a pill, but Taylor said it’s too early too know. And once a treatment is available, Lauer wondered how quickly the results will come.

“There are a lot of bald men out there who want their hair back,” Lauer noted. “Are we suggesting that at one point you’re going to get this vitamin D into your system and those hair follicles are going to be turned on immediately again?" he added.

“Are you just going to start sprouting hair?” Lauer wondered. “Is this going to take months, years?” But again, Taylor told him, it’s too soon to tell.

“We hope this is going to be a potential cure but there’s much work that needs to be done to translate what we’ve learned in the lab to humans,” Taylor said.

Men shouldn't just start popping vitamin D pills.  Too much vitamin D can cause calcium to build up in the body, causing an abnormal heart rhythm, kidney stones, nausea and constipation.

Lauer ended with what he called a “fun fact for our friends without hair.”

“You lose about 100 hairs from your scalp every single day, which means that in about 2 1/2 weeks, I’m Mr. Clean," he lamented.

Slideshow: Bald and beautiful

EPA. AP

Some of Hollywood's toughest leading men sport shaved heads.

Launch slideshow

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Slideshow: Bald and beautiful

EPA. AP

Launch slideshow

Sometime in his late 30s, after his hair had been thinning for several years, Dr. Albert Mannes decided to shave what was left of his mane. He then noticed a curious thing: "Strangers were more standoffish, more deferential," he recalls.

"I found that people treated me differently once I started shaving my head, which made me wonder whether my experience was unique," says Mannes.

This led Mannes, a lecturer at the Wharton School, at the University of Pennsylvania, to design three experiments that tested other people's perception of men with shaved heads. His findings appear in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

All three studies found similar results: A man's shorn scalp was linked with dominance. In other words, men with shaved heads were perceived as powerful by others.

It seems that closely cropped or bald domes have a certain manly swagger to them that project a powerful look.

In the first study, 59 college students looked at 25 photographs of men enrolled in a business school program. Ten of the men had shaved heads while the rest wore their hair in various styles and lengths.

Volunteers rated the photos of men with shorn scalps as more dominant, meaning they looked more powerful, influential, and authoritative than those with a full head of hair.

In a second experiment, 344 adults were shown photographs of four different men. One photo was of the man's real hair and a second shot of him had been digitally altered to remove all of it.

Adults rated men with the digitally shaved heads as more dominant than his coiffed counterpart, an effect researchers say was largely due to perceiving men with shorn scalps as having more confidence and masculinity.

In addition, men without much hair were viewed as nearly an inch taller and 13 percent stronger than men with plenty of it. Although a shaved head had its advantages, men were rated as less attractive and looking nearly four years older than guys with full heads of hair.

Why is a nearly bare head perceived as more dominant? Mannes offers three explanations.

For one, he points to stereotypes. "Shaved heads are found in American culture in traditionally masculine professions, such as the military, law enforcement, and sports," Mannes explains.

A second is that a man who shaves his head is viewed as unconventional. And there's some evidence that the powerful are less inhibited about violating conventional norms, he says.

Finally, Mannes suggests that since "Society places such a high aesthetic value on hair, it takes confidence for a man to dispense with it."

In a third experiment, no photographs were used and more than 500 adults rated their perception of a man based solely on a written physical description of him. All volunteers read the exact same profile except for the description of his hair, which portrayed him as having thick brown hair, thinning brown hair, or a shaved head.

The man described as having a shaved head was rated highest in dominance, masculinity, leadership potential, and strength. The guy with thick tresses scored higher for attractiveness than a shorn scalp and slightly higher on confidence.

The dude with thinning hair scored the lowest on every trait except for norm violation. 

"Men with thinning hair may improve their self-esteem and how they are perceived by others by shaving," Mannes suggests.

He advises men who are getting sparse on top "to stop fighting Mother Nature and try the shaved look."

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Think about how much time you'd save if you could judge which traffic toll lines move quickest, just by looking at them. According to new research, having that skill doesn't only subtract a few minutes from your road trip--it also makes your life a whole lot easier.

Some of us are born with a better "number sense" -- the math whizzes are likely the ones breezing through the tolls because they're better at judging numbers. Turns out, these people find daily tasks easier than those of us who struggle, say researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The good news: You're not doomed if numbers aren't your strong suit. "The precision of people's gut sense of numbers seems to improve all the way up into their 30s," says lead study author Justin Halberda, Ph.D., an associate professor at Johns Hopkins.

Cool, right? Now use these tips to see how your number sense stacks up--and work to improve it. (And for more secrets to sharpening memory, boosting creativity, and slaying stress, discover 27 Ways to Power Up Your Brain.)

Improve your intuition
Everyday activities that stimulate your brain's ability to estimate can improve your number sense. When you're outside a bar, ask yourself: How many people are in line? Or at home: How many railings are on your porch? You don't even need to figure out the right answer, Halberda says. The process of asking your brain to calculate the estimations is enough exercise.

Be a better gamer
Preliminary research out of the University of Rochester shows the tasks and rapid decision-making that videogamers face might improve their numeric intuition. "People who play action video games may actually have a more precise number sense than people who don't," Halberda says. Your move: Stick with 3D action video games on your favorite system that have you in the driver's seat, scoring the goal, or climbing the mountain. (Looks like all those hours on your X-Box pay off on the court, too: Learn How Video Games Help You at Sports.)

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• How to Speed Up Time!
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• Boost Your IQ in 20 Minutes
• Sign up for the Men's Health Daily Dose newsletter for must-have tips in your inbox every single day!

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Rookie Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals is a polarizing figure in baseball today, mostly due to his attitude. But recent discoveries in social psychology suggest our perceptions of Harper may be shaped by something a little hairier: the kid's facial hair.

Rookie Bryce Harper, all of 19 years old, has such a poor rep already in Major League Baseball that Cole Hamels felt justified in hitting him with a fastball, and then bragging about it afterwards, as Jelisa Castrodale of NBCSports.com points out.

Apparently there could be a number of reasons to explain the visceral reaction to Harper, including a propensity toward arrogance. But could the kid’s facial hair have anything to do with it?

Sounds bizarre, but maybe.

Last January, in the journal Behavioral Ecology, two researchers, Barnaby Dixson of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and Paul Vasey, of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, released a study on reactions to men’s beards.

They pointed out that beard growth is under genetic control, and that it may serve as a sexual signal between men. In tests, women in both Samoa and in New Zealand did not rate bearded men as any more attractive than the same men pictured without beards, so beards weren’t helping the guys get girls. But other men (women, too) viewed bearded male faces as more threatening when the pictured males adopted an angry look.

Facial hair, the authors wrote “may intimidate rival males by increasing perceptions of the size of the jaw, overall length of the face, and by enhancing aggressive and threatening jaw-thrusting behaviors ... . The current study is the first to show that the beard augments a threatening behavioral display as bearded men with angry facial expressions received significantly higher scores for aggressiveness compared with clean-shaven faces ... . This suggests that the beard plays an important role in intermale signaling of threat and aggression.”

Other, past studies, have shown that when mock juries are presented with pictures of men accused of crimes like rape, the juries are much more likely to believe the bearded man is guilty. A 2004 study from researchers at Montclair State University in New Jersey asked 371 people to “sketch the face of a criminal offender. Eighty-two percent of the sketches contained some form of facial hair.” Yet beards have often been seen a sign of maturity, education, and competence. So what’s up?

A man’s facial features have been shown to reflect both his androgen status -- how much testosterone and related hormones he’s making -- and physical strength. Beards, themselves dependant upon androgens, can frame and accentuate those features.

This could be positive. “Both men and women ascribe positive attributes such as intelligence, courage, confidence and social maturity to beards,” Dixson explained in an email. But in his study, he included the angry expressions, and then, the beards made the men look threatening and meaner than when the same men were clean shaven.

So it’s all the above, suggested Dixson. “Beards appear to be linked with perceptions of elevated age (maturity), social status, dominance and threatening facial displays.”

Whether or not it’s deliberate strategy, the rash of beards among athletes, most famously Brian Wilson of the San Francisco Giants, is one way to intimidate the opposition. The callow Harper is just playing along.  

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com)  to be published Sept. 13.

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Warning: Yellow journalism alert.

When grown men and little boys urinate, occasionally our entire body is abruptly racked with a mysterious, internal blast of cold that makes us visibly shudder from the shoulders down. It typically occurs near the end of the task, lasting roughly one frigid second.

This chill is not discussed, of course, in polite circles -- or even when we return to our buds in the sports bar. So, at no time will you hear: “Dudes, you’ll never guess what just happened to me in the bathroom?” Well … hopefully never.

Yet, we’ve given this sensation a name: the pee shiver. And as the name suggests, depending on a guy’s aim, it can make for messy results. 

So let’s get right to question No. 1.

Why, in the name of Wiz Khalifa (or, if you like, P. Diddy), does this happen?

No leaks were required to obtain this information. We simply turned to Dr. Anish Sheth, author of “What’s My Pee Telling Me?”

“No one knows for certain what the specific trigger for the shivering is,” says Sheth, formerly director of the gastrointestinal motility program at Yale Medical School. But he points to two generally accepted variables to help solve this riddle.

First, the feeling “mostly” is experienced by males. Second, it “occurs most commonly while voiding large amounts of urine,” he says.

Or, to put it as delicately as possible, the icy jolt seems to hit after we’ve really, really had to go. Never after a tiny trickle.

According to Sheth, our parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for “rest-and-digest” functions) lowers the body’s blood pressure “to initiate urination.” One leading theory behind the shudder is that peeing can unleash a reactive response from the body’s sympathetic nervous system (which handles “fight or flight” actions).

On the cellular level, the body is theoretically flushed with catecholamines (which you know better as chemicals like dopamine or hormones like adrenaline). Those are dispatched to help restore or maintain blood pressure, Sheth says. But the microscopic energy bullets “may also trigger the shiver reflect.”

This theory, the author says, best explains “the gender difference as men pee standing up and, therefore, would be more prone to feeling the effects of a lower blood pressure, thereby triggering this exaggerated sympathetic nervous system response.

“Anecdotally,” he adds, “I don’t believe I have ever experienced the post-pee shivers while sitting down.” This would suggest that women don't tend to get them. (Do you? If so, please let us know.)

“I wouldn't know if it's a guy thing or a girl thing because I've never had a conversation with a girl about this – and it's not likely to happen anytime soon,” says stand-up comedian Dan Nainan

“I always wonder: what is that? … Why is it happening?” Nainan adds. “Obviously there is an evolutionary or natural-selection reason for everything. (But) as I'm trying to picture a caveman urinating out in the open, I'm wondering what the necessity of the shivering is.

“I think it tends to happen more in a public bathroom,” he adds. “Could it be some sort of way to warn off nearby enemies or something?”

Wow, comics must have to endure some pretty rough bathrooms.

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.”

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By Andrew Daniels
Men's Health

The mystery of skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses may never be cracked, but at least it appears that researchers have solved one piece of the hipster puzzle.

In a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a Harvard University team found that when your friends start liking the same indie bands as you, you’re more likely to stop liking those bands.

Researchers examined 200 college students’ Facebook pages over a four-year period and discovered that students who shared similar tastes in music bonded, instead of those students passing on tastes to each other. So while two hip dudes might strike up a conversation after noticing each other’s well-worn Fleet Foxes t-shirt, it’s much rarer that they’d actually adopt each other’s tastes.

How to Date a Hipster

Kevin Lewis, lead study researcher and a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Harvard, explains the science of why you’re a hipster: “The meaning of an indie/alternative taste rests not just in the taste itself—but also in being the only one among one’s friendship circle that expresses it,” he says. “If I like The Decemberists, and suddenly my friends start liking them too, suddenly I’m no longer socially distinctive. So this taste loses much of its appeal and I will run off in search of some new band to express my ‘hip’ identity.”

Well, it’s a shame that your silly, trendchasing friends are stealing your favorite bands away from you, but don’t worry: You can always find new, even moreobscure acts that your buddies won’t catch wind of for at least a couple months. Here are 3 innovative services you can use to find your new favorite band, courtesy of Eliot Van Buskirk, editor in chief of Evolver.fm, a site that covers digital music apps.

The Nine Best Apps for Men

Pitchify
Use Pitchify to receive instant access to the best and buzziest new albums. The site aggregates every new release that receives a score of 8 or more (out of 10) from Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound—two of the most tastemaking blogs on the net—and automatically queues them up to stream in Spotify. (You’ll need to sign up for a free Spotify account first.) “Most of us can’t sit around and patrol Pitchfork all day looking for music, so this takes all of about 10 seconds to start listening to an amazing new album,” says Van Buskirk.

We Are Hunted
We Are Hunted is a free online music chart that tracks the biggest emerging songs that people are buzzing about on social media, blogs, message boards, and P2P networks. “It’s very much oriented toward new music,” Van Buskirk says, “and it’s so simple that a two-year-old can use it.” He’s right: Whereas aggregating sites like The Hype Machine are tailored for people who know how to scour the net for music, We Are Hunted utilizes a scrolling wall with big, bright band photos and easy-to-stream mp3s.

Discovr
Discovr for iOS ($2) operates like Pandora on the idea that if you dig a certain band, you’ll probably dig bands that sound just like them. Search for an artist, and Discovr will “map” that artist, establishing a web-like constellation of similar bands that you can immediately hear with the slide of a finger. “There are millions of bands on this app, and it’s a really neat way to browse around finding them all,” says Van Buskirk.

Take one part Tumblr, two parts inspiration, and you get The Cortex

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You’d think somebody repeatedly sticking a needle in your penis would be a little off-putting, but the 21-year-old Iranian apparently thought it would be a grand idea to have Persian script reading borow be salaamat (good luck on your journeys), and the first initial of his girlfriend’s last name (“M”) tattooed onto his little gentleman.

He was left with a permanent semi-erection as a reminder of just how good the idea was. 

His case raises a number of questions, not least whether the wish for good luck is directed to the penis or to the man, and if it’s to the penis, where, exactly, is it going? But, medically speaking, how could getting penis ink give make the organ go haywire?

The answer rests in the traditional technique the man subjected himself to. “Handheld needles are used and there is no control of the depth of the needle,” Iranian urologists reported in the most recent Journal of Sexual Medicine. “Henna, ash, and other natural pigments are used by traditional tattooists. They first use their needles to penetrate the skin. Then they apply the coloring material on the perforated skin surface.”

Naturally, this proved painful. After several days, the pain subsided. Soon after it did, though, the man noticed that his nighttime woodies were lasting a long time. A week later, he had a 24/7 priapic erection.

As erectile dysfunction pill commercials constantly remind us, non-sex-related erections lasting longer than four hours are dangerous for penises. The lack of fresh blood flow can starve the spongy tissues of oxygen, destroying them and resulting in impotence.

There are two types of priapism, ischemic and non-ischemic, according to UCLA urologist Dr. Jeffrey Bassett. In a normal erection, blood flows into the penis via arteries, and as pressure builds, the veins leading out are temporarily blocked. In ischemic priapism, the veins don’t open up again.

In non-ischemic priapism, the veins allow blood out of the penile tissue, but too much blood is flowing in via the arteries and the veins can’t keep up. So blood pressure builds. This isn’t as dangerous since fresh blood is coming in all the time, but it can be pretty inconvenient. If it doesn’t resolve, either on its own or with treatment, it can cause damage in some cases.

Bassett once treated a 24-year-old skateboarder who’d traumatized his pelvic area in a skate accident. It tuned out that the injury caused a blood vessel fistula that interfered with normal flow into and out of the penis.

According to the Iranian doctors, this is what happened to the young man. The tattooist punctured too-deep holes that damaged vessels in the penis, resulting in fistulas, and then a pseudoaneurysm, a pooling of blood outside a vessel wall. They recommended he see a specialist to have the blood removed, but he rejected that idea and saw another doctor to have a shunt procedure performed. It didn’t work.

Since the fellow is still able to have sex, and achieve a more-or-less normal erection, he’s rejected any more treatments, even the one his urologists recommended in the first place.

In one of those statements you’d think nobody would actually have to make, the Iranian doctors wrote “based on our unique case, we discourage penile tattooing.”  

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By Wynne Parry
LiveScience 

A low-pitched voice in a man is associated with a litany of masculine traits: dominance, strength, greater physical size, more attractiveness to women, and so on. But new research strikes one trait off that list: virility.

An Australian study looked at male voice pitch, women's perceptions of it, and semen quality. Their first finding was no surprise: Women like deep voices and consider them masculine.

But contrary to expectations, they also found that these men aren't better off in the semen department. In fact, by one measure of sperm quality — sperm concentration in ejaculate — men with the attractive voices appeared to have a disadvantage.

This is a surprise because females, both humans and of other species, are believed to glean information about male virility through secondary sexual traits, such as facial hair and muscle mass in humans and other traits in other animals, such as colorful plumage in birds.

In the case of voice pitch, the researchers from the University of Western Australia suggest there may be a trade-off at work. In other words, traits associated with dominance and attractiveness, such as physical strength or a deep voice, may come at the cost of reduced sperm quality, they write in a study published Dec. 22 in the journal PLoS ONE.

For instance, higher testosterone levels are associated with a deeper voice, more masculine features, more dominant behavior and success in obtaining sexual partners. Although testosterone plays an important role in the formation of sperm, however, high levels of it can actually impair sperm production, they write.

To conduct the research, the team recruited 54 men to provide voice recordings and semen samples. Their recordings were analyzed by software and ranked by 30 female volunteers on attractiveness or masculinity.  

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• 5 Myths About the Male Body
• 6 (Other) Great Things Sex Can Do For You
• 10 Surprising Sex Statistics

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