Men Like Big Butts And Evolution Shows Us Why

Men are peculiar creatures. You never know what they may like. However, a majority do seem to prefer softer, curvier shaped females.

Now, new research presented by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and Bilkent University have investigated men's mate preference for women with a "theoretically optimal angle of lumbar curvature," at a 45.5 degree curve from back to buttocks, allowing ancestral women better support and providing them to carry multiple pregnancies throughout their lives.

"What's fascinating about this research is that it is yet another scientific illustration of a close fit between a sex-differentiated feature of human morphology -- in this case lumbar curvature -- and an evolved standard of attractiveness," said the study's co-author David Buss, a UT Austin psychology professor, in a news release. "This adds to a growing body of evidence that beauty is not entirely arbitrary, or 'in the eyes of the beholder' as many in mainstream social science believed, but rather has a coherent adaptive logic."

The research consisted of two studies; one that examined vertebral wedging and another that looked at an underlying spinal feature that worked to influence the actual curve in womens' lower backs.

During the first study, researchers had close to 100 men rate the attractiveness of several manipulated images displaying spinal curves ranging across the natural spectrum. Most were more attracted to those who exhibited a 45 degree lumbar curvature.

The second study looked at whether men preferred this angle but with larger buttocks and whether it could be attributed to the angle or the spine itself.

This time around, 200 men were presented via groups of images of women with differing buttock size and vertebral wedging at the same lumbar curvature degree.

"This enabled us to conclusively show that men prefer women who exhibit specific angles of spinal curvature over buttock mass," study co-author Eric Russell added.

Findings revealed how men's psychological preference has evolved throughout thousands of years on an evolutionary basis and what they will find attractive in the future.