Better Looking, Better Sperm

There’s a Men’s Health article that’s been much-bookmarked and linked in the last couple of days: 15 Things You Don’t Know About Your Penis. My interest was piqued by #13:

Better-looking men may have stronger sperm. Spanish researchers showed women photos of guys who had good, average, and lousy sperm — and told them to pick the handsomest men. The women chose the best sperm producers most often.

Evolutionarily speaking, that makes perfect sense. Preferable mates usually have external indicators to help females choose them.

I dug up a BBC article on the study, which didn’t feature particularly large sample groups:

Maria Sancho-Navarro, a researcher at the University of Valencia, said men were generally rated as being attractive if they had “symmetrical” faces.

“The women found that men with symmetrical faces were more attractive. These men had eyes, ears and nose that were more symmetrical than the other men,” she told BBC News Online.

For those with the appropriate scholarly credentials, the original study was “Facial attractiveness in men provides clues to semen quality” and was published in Evolution and Human Behavior.