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."
National Headache Foundation
www.headaches.org
Navigating the site is a bit of, well, a headache, but there's a lot of information to be gleaned if you look hard enough, from types of headaches and treatments to how to keep a headache diary (to help your doctor).
BODY OF KNOWLEDGE
The total skin area of an average-size man is 20 square feet; a woman 17. The total surface area of the human intestines (23 feet), including all of the little bumps and bumps on bumps (villi and millivilli) is half an acre (21,780 square feet), according to "The Sizesaurus" by Stephen Strauss.
GET ME THAT. STAT! Hospital infections caused by the common bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (also known as staph) have increased more than 7% each year from 1998 to 2003, according to a new study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
OBSERVATION
If life was fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
- Johnny Carson (1925-2005)
NEVER SAY DIET
The world's speed-eating record for birthday cake is 5 pounds in 11 minutes, 26 seconds, achieved by Richard LeFevre on May 10, 2005. It is not known whether it was actually LeFevre's birthday.
PHOBIA OF THE WEEK
Catagelophobia - fear of being ridiculed
BEST MEDICINE
Q: What does HMO stand for?
A: It's a variation of the phrase, "Hey, Moe!," referring to a health care concept pioneered by Dr. Moe Howard, who discovered that a patient could be made to forget about the pain in his foot if he was poked hard enough in the eyes. Modern practice has since replaced the physical finger poke with noninvasive equivalents like voice mail, referral slips and near-life terms in the waiting room.
CURTAIN CALLS
In 1996, Richard Versalle, a tenor performing at the New York Metropolitan Opera House, suffered a heart attack and fell 10 feet from a ladder to the stage after singing the line "You can only live so long" from the opening scene of "The Makropulos Case."
The Czech opera is about an elixir that confers eternal youth.
