Scott LaFee, Contributor

Men with lower-pitched voices have more children than men with high-pitched voices do, say researchers, who suggest that for reproductive-minded women, mate selection favours men with deeper voices.

The study by David Feinberg and colleagues at McMaster University in Canada, in Biology Letters, found that women find lower-pitched male voices to be more attractive, judging them to be more dominant, older, healthier and more masculine sounding. The opposite was true for men, who generally deemed women with higher-pitched voices to be more attractive, subordinate, feminine, healthier and younger sounding.

"While we find in this new study that voice pitch is not related to offspring mortality rates," Feinberg wrote, "We do find that men with low voice pitch have higher reproductive success and more children born to them."

Feinberg and colleagues chose as their study subjects the Hadza tribe of Tanzania, one of the last true hunter-gatherer cultures. Because the Hadza have no modern birth control, researchers were able to determine that men who have lower-pitched voices have more children than men with higher-pitched voices.

"If our ancestors went through a similar process," Feinberg said, "this could be one reason why men's and women's voices sound different."

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