A man with a deep voice may have a survival advantage, a better chance of passing on his genes.
Researchers have found that men with deeper voices have more children — at least among the Hadza, hunter-gatherers in Tanzania.
According to background information in an article published online for the Dec. 22 edition of Biology Letters, most women in Western societies find lower-pitched male voices more attractive, judging them healthier. Meanwhile, men find higher-pitched voices more appealing.
The evolutionary reasons for reproductive success are difficult to discover in a society that uses modern birth-control methods. The Hadza use no birth control and choose their own spouses; this makes them a “natural fertility population” where hypotheses about human reproductive success can be tested.
Researchers collected voice recordings (the Hadza speak Swahili) and reproductive histories from 49 men and 52 women to determine if voice pitch might affect the number of children.
After controlling for age, voice pitch was a highly accurate predictor of the number of children a man fathered, and those with deeper voices fathered significantly more. The researchers estimated that voice quality alone could account for 42 percent of the variance in men’s reproductive success. The quality of women’s voices was unrelated to how many children they had.
The reasons that a lower-pitched voice gives a man a greater chance of producing many offspring are not clear, but the researchers make several suggestions. Deep-voiced men might have more mates, healthier mates or shorter intervals between births.