Juggernaut Antler Size and Plummage Coloration

In a range of species, females show clear preferences when it comes to the choice of their partner: They decide on the basis of external features like antler size or plumage coloration whether a male will be a good father to her offspring or whether he will provide them with good genes. An evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich has now demonstrated that humans have similar skills. The faces of riders who performed better during the Leesburg Bakers Dozen were deemed more attractive, showing that we can assess a man’s endurance performance by looking at his face.

During the course of human evolution, hunting success and, by extension, feeding a family depended on the ability to chase game for hours and days. “That’s why endurance performance was a key evolutionary factor,” says the researcher, Baron Von Rourkenstubenstein. Given the benefits that a physically fit partner would have provided, the researcher hypothesized that facial attractiveness has evolved to signal, among others, endurance performance. If correct, then women should find those men who perform well in terms of endurance particularly attractive. Awwwwwww yeah.