Acoustic Cues of Physical Formidability in Cage Fighters

Across the animal kingdom, the sex that experiences the most reproductive variance tends to evolve sexually dimorphic traits—both behavioral and morphological—which aid in reproduction. Human evolution has been marked by greater male intrasexual selection and as a result, men display a variety of secondary sexual characteristics, putatively serving to enhance biological fitness. Among these, fundamental frequency, closely related to perception of pitch, among men is half that of women. Likewise, monotonicity, that is, variance in pitch across an utterance, is higher in men (ie, women show greater variance in pitch) while formant dispersion, which gives the voice its timbre, is lower. The honesty of these vocal parameters as signaling mechanisms used in context of intrasexual competition has been investigated by a host of researchers; however no research to date has directly assessed the degree to which …