“Where words fail, music speaks,” wrote the Danish fairytale author and poet Hans Christian Andersen in the 19^th century. Around the same time, over in England, the more practically-minded Charles Darwin was wondering what purpose music served, evolutionarily speaking. He knew that neither birds nor humans need it for survival, but maybe, he thought, it plays a role in sexual selection. Did we first begin breaking out in song to “charm the opposite sex,” as Darwin put it? Very likely so, according to a new study by British researchers. Not only can music help men attract mates, the more complex the song, the greater the composer’s chances of getting a woman to sleep with him.
Psychologist Benjamin Charlton of the University of Sussex divided 1,465 female participants of child-bearing age into two groups, according to where they were in their menstrual cycle: Those with the best chance of conceiving went ...
