Secrets of a woman's walk
A woman's walk may reveal more than realised
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Thursday, 08, Nov 2007 10:02
Women walking with a sexy sway may actually be sending out misleading messages to men to ensure only the males they are interested in are able to get close to them.
Researchers have found that females are able to send out more subtle signs to men they like about when they are fertile and are able to dupe other men into thinking they are fertile when they are not.
This, said Meghan Provost at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia, allows a woman to hide her fertile period from undesirable men who might take advantage of her at that time.
Dr Provost and colleagues at Queen's University in Ontario studied the way women walked and their saliva samples - which show the most fertile phases of the month - to identify a correlation between walking and fertility.
When fertile the women were found to walk with their knees closer together and with less of a sway.
They then asked 40 men to rate how attracted they were to the women when they were showed the images of them walking.
The participants said they were most attracted to the women when they were least fertile, surprising the researchers so much that they tested the finding in two more groups of men.
"If women are trying to protect themselves from sexual assault at times of peak fertility, it would make sense for them to advertise attractiveness on a broad scale when they are not fertile," Dr Provost told the New Scientist, which reported the findings.
Previous studies have found that men respond more markedly to women when they are ovulating by picking up on subtle smells and facial expressions.
This benefits women as an attractive walk during an infertile period will dupe men that women are not interested in, but those they let get close to them will be able to respond to actual signs of fertility.
"More and more research is being published indicating that ovulation perhaps should be considered unadvertised instead of concealed," Dr Provost added.