House of Eratosthenes

People who live in the tropics have more baby girls compared with those living in other parts of the world, work reveals.

It may be down to the hotter weather or the longer days, says US researcher Dr Kristen Navara in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

She says this climate may change miscarriage rates and sperm quality.

Or there may be some evolutionary advantage to having more girls than boys if you live by the equator.

Experts already know that the birth rates of boys and girls vary across the globe.

While some of this can be explained by society – in countries like China baby boys are favoured and many unborn girls are electively aborted – there are natural processes at work.

Research suggests the female foetus is less fragile than the male foetus, which is more prone to the effects of the environment on pregnant women.
:
Dr Bill James of University College London, who has spent his career studying sex ratio patterns, said although the differences found were statistically significant, it was not as meaningful as other factors that have been linked to sex ratios at birth.
:
“The idea is that, in mammals, males have a greater variance in their reproductive success.

“Some have lots of offspring and others have none, whereas most females will have at least one offspring.

“So it pays a women who is reproductively fit in good times to have a boy because he may well give her more grandchildren.

“But when times are hard and if she is less reproductively fit, she is better off having a girl because in this way she should gain at least one grandchild.”

Is it just me, or did this article stop making sense about halfway through?

I’m not trying to be a sexist, here, but when I think of tough climates versus wimpy climates, I’m thinking the tough one is the cold one and the unwind-after-work one is the beach with the white sand, the waiter bringing me a weird blue or green drink with an umbrella in it. Maybe it’s my upbringing in the Pacific Northwest, I dunno. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in a cushier latitude now, one with palm trees…listening to California natives bitch and bitch whenever it’s any crisper than 60 degrees.

My point is, these scientists talk as if they know, if they say something about the males being better suited for a colder climate, they’ll lose all their grant money for the next several years. Men must always be weak, women must always be durable. Think about it. We’re up to our eyeballs in these “scientific studies,” multiple times per month, if not per week. How many years has it been since you’ve seen a study suggesting the male characteristics are better suited for…anything?

This one twists the logic around 180 degrees. Statistically significant differential in girl-versus-boy babies born in a gentler climate…and so we have to make this look like the female fetus is more robust. You know, it could very well be. But how do you get from there, to here? Somewhere, they explained that, and I missed it.

Every man who’s ever been married…every man who’s ever lived with a woman, and a thermostat…knows. Women hate being cold. It’s not sexism — it’s just a fact. It’s their bodies, they’re built to be pregnant.

Go out jogging sometime. See all the cute lady joggers. Now keep on doing it until school starts…then into October…when the low pressure systems pull all the rain in. Where’d they all go? Dude, I don’t wanna see that! Nothing around but a bunch of ugly Rocky Balboa wanna-bes. Happens every year. Weather gets cold, the women are gone. Science is going to say that’s because women are more resilient?

Whatever; that science has become politicized, is pretty old news by now. But it’s interesting that nature may have a way of singling out the sex of the baby based on the climate. It’s pretty easy to see this kind of musing and speculating is still, after centuries, in the stages of “we don’t even know what we don’t yet know.”

My Mom used to say it was the personality of the mother. If woman having the babies, had what it took to whip the kids into shape, said kids would turn out to be boys. The dilemma with the baby crying after bedtime, for example. Her theory was, if your tendency as a mother was to come running when you heard some whimpering in the crib, you’d probably have girls. If you had that streak in you that would permit you to lay down some “whoopass,” you’d probably have boys. She had two.

You know one thing I didn’t see discussed at all, in spite of this sumptuous banquet of theories to toss around — was the frequency of sexual activity. If you live in a place that’s cold enough, it has a real impact on what you can do with your spare time. There are plenty of spots on this big rock where it is so cold, for so much of the year, that when the work is done you can only do one thing.

Hmmm…that seems to me a sufficiently solid idea to at least toss in the pot. If that’s proven out over time, it would mean the discrepancy has nothing to do with the innate robustness of girls versus boys, or vice-versa.

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Women Naturally Inclined to be “Hotties”
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009