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  3. BEAUTY, the saying has it, is only skin deep. Not true. Skin is important(the cosmetics industry proves that). But so is what li

BEAUTY, the saying has it, is only skin deep. Not true. Skin is important(the cosmetics industry proves that). But so is what li

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问题 BEAUTY, the saying has it, is only skin deep. Not true. Skin is important(the cosmetics industry proves that). But so is what lies under it. In particular, the shape of people’s faces, determined by their bone structure, contributes enormously to how beautiful they are. And, since the ultimate point of beauty is to signal who is a good prospect as a mate, what makes a face beautiful is not only an aesthetic matter but also a biological one. How those bone structures arise, and how they communicate desirable traits, are big evolutionary questions.
Until now, experiments to try to determine the biological basis of beauty have been of the please-look-at-these-photographs-and-answer-some-questions variety. Some useful and not necessarily obvious results have emerged, such as that one determinant of beauty is facial symmetry.
But what would really help is a breeding experiment which allowed the shapes of faces to be followed across the generations to see how those shapes relate to variations in things that might be desirable in a mate. These might include fertility, fecundity, social status, present health, and likely resistance to future infection and infestation.
Correlations between many of these phenomena and attributes of the body-beautiful have, indeed, been established. But in a pair-forming, highly social species such as Homo sapiens, you also have to live with your co-child-raiser or, at least, collaborate with him or her. So other things may be important in a mate, too, such as an even temper and a friendly outlook.
It would be impossible to do such a breeding experiment on people, of course. But as Irene Elia, a biological anthropologist at Cambridge, realised, it has in fact been done, for the past five decades, on a different species of animal. Dr Elia has published her analysis of this experiment in the Quarterly Review of Biology. The animals in question are foxes.(317 words)
[Key words]
fecundity 繁殖力
Homo sapiens 智人
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答案 俗话说，美貌只是虚有其表而已。其实不然，皮肤是很重要的(化妆品行业就是证据)，但是皮肤下的器官也很重要，尤其是人的脸型，脸型是由骨骼结构决定的，对美貌有很大程度的影响。美貌的最终目的是表明自己是一个绝佳的伴侣，长出一张漂亮的脸不仅仅是一个审美问题还是一个生物学问题。骨骼的构成以及它们构造美丽容颜的方式都是与进化相关的大问题。 直到现在，要判断美貌的生理基础的实验一直都离不开“请看这些照片”“回答几个问题”之类的办法。也有一些研究结果很有效但并不是很明显，比如其中一个决定美丽的因素就是面部的匀称。 但人类的繁殖实验意义重大，繁殖使人的脸型在代与代之间传承下去，从而可以看出脸型的变化传承配偶美貌的成因。其中包括生育力、繁殖力、社会地位、当前健康状况以及未来的对传染病的抵抗能力。 许多现象和特性的确也都与美貌相关。但人类是成对的高度社会化的物种，需要和配偶共同生活以抚养孩子，或者至少一方抚养，另一方配合。所以一些其他的因素对配偶来说也很重要，比如性情温和以及长相和善。 当然，不可能在人身上做这种繁殖试验。但剑桥大学的生物人类学家艾琳-伊利亚经过50年终于完成了在一种不同的物种上的繁殖实验。艾琳博士已经把她的实验分析发表在了《生物学评论季刊》，实验使用的动物都是狐狸。
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