A recent article in the British magazine the Economist describes a scientific study done at Syracuse University by professor Scott Pitnick, focusing on the biological relationship between bats, their testicles, and their brains (some readers are now asking, “Why?”). Since many women have long maintained that men actually think with the lower part of their anatomy, the article had my attention.
The research team’s premise is that a bat’s testicles would be larger in species in which the females of that group were more promiscuous, and smaller when the females limited their couplings. The article went on to casually mention, as if we all knew a lot about such things, “Greater promiscuity does, indeed, lead to bigger testes, presumably because a male needs to make more sperm to have a fighting chance of fathering offspring, if those sperm are competing with a lot of other males.”
This is fascinating, in part since women are so often accused of “busting” this particular part of the male body. A legitimate scientific study now shows that we actually give men what they love! More interestingly, the naughtier we women are, the bigger theirs get! They “shrink” to embarrassing miniatures only if we are prudish. Again from the article: “Gorillas which discourage dalliances between other males and the females of their harems have small testes. Chimpanzees, among whom females mate widely, have large ones.”
The addenda our curiosity was waiting for: “Human testes lie between these two extremes.” This conjures a spectrum with King Kong on one end, J. Fred Muggs on the other, and various husbands or boyfriends — or both — somewhere in the middle.
The smallest bat testes were found among those whose female partners were monogamous. Then the kicker: “Brain size, by contrast . . . varied in the opposite direction.” The bigger the testes, it seems, the smaller the brains. (Many of the women reading this now rest their case.)
Although not likely to be nominated for a Nobel Prize, this study gives us something to ponder. As the article put it, “It is better to be virile and dim, than impotent and smart.”
Then again, a lot of us already knew that.
Sleep tight, King Kong. We know you’re much smarter than you look in those full frontal shots.
