Don't dance like dad!!

[Gob]

Scientists say they've carried out the first rigorous analysis of dance moves that make men attractive to women.

The researchers say that movements associated with good dancing may be indicative of good health and reproductive potential.

Their findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

"When you go out to clubs people have an intuitive understanding of what makes a good and bad dancer," said co-author Dr Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University, UK.

"What we've done for the very first time is put those things together with a biometric analysis so we can actually calculate very precisely the kinds of movements people focus on and associate them with women's ratings of male dancers."

Dr Neave asked young men who were not professional dancers, to dance in a laboratory to a very basic drum rhythm and their movements with 12 cameras.


These movements were then converted into a computer-generated cartoon - an avatar - which women rated on a scale of one to seven. He was surprised by the results.

"We thought that people's arms and legs would be really important. The kind of expressive gestures the hands [make], for example. But in fact this was not the case," he said.


"We found that (women paid more attention to) the core body region: the torso, the neck, the head. It was not just the speed of the movements, it was also the variability of the movement. So someone who is twisting, bending, moving, nodding."

Movements that went down terribly were twitchy and repetitive - so called "Dad dancing".

Dr Neave's aim was to establish whether young men exhibited the same courtship movement rituals in night clubs as animals do in the wild. In the case of animals, these movements give information about their health, age, their reproductive potential and their hormone status.

"People go to night clubs to show off and attract the opposite sex so I think it's a valid way of doing this," Dr Neave explained.

"In animals, the male has to be in good physical quality to carry out these movements. We think the same is happening in humans and certainly the guys that can put these movements together are going to be young and fit and healthy."

Dr Neave also took blood samples from the volunteers. Early indications from biochemical tests suggest that the men who were better dancers were also more healthy.

Video on page, learn how to dance guys!

[tyro]

Sooooooooo…



…black men make for better partners than white men?

[Gob]

For the vertical and horizontal tango I believe

[The Hen]

Just ensure you don't dance like a White Guy.



Also known as 'Dad'.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I can't dance for the life of me. Never could disco, never could rock dance. My wife and I took ballroom dance classes multiple times and while I remember all the steps, moves and techniques I have no sense of rythum, beat or timing.

Don't think it affected my virility nor attracting a mate.

My vasectomy had more impact on my virility than my non-ability to dance.

[Big RR]

And Michael jackson, for all his acclaimed dance moves, was still reduced to seeking out little boys to fuflfill his urges; I guess the wmen never saw him.

[Crackpot]

THe irony here being is that "dad" of all people actually procreated.

[Big RR]

Or that the milkmen of some of the dads did. And maybe that milkmen, as a group, are great dancers.

[Gob]

I'm a great dancer.

Mind you it takes a few pints of liquid courage before I'll get up and strut my funky stuff.

So maybe I'm not...

[Andrew D]

If a woman finds me attractive or not based on my dancing, that woman has instantly become unattractive to me.

[alice]

That survey seems to have made a tremendous leap.
They turned the dance movements of a few blokes into computer generated cartoons, and then asked women to rate the cartoons. The women liked the cartoons that showed good twisting, bending and generally more fluid movements.
Based on this, and nothing else, this survey is meant to indicate that the better dancers have better reproductive potential?

Any girl in a nightclub will confirm that they are going to watch and be impressed by a guy doing good dance moves. Any guy in a nightclub will be impressed by a girl doing good dance moves. After that come a hell of a lot more variables before we make the huge leap these researchers have made. For starters, the next step would usually be meeting the 'good dancers' and/or 'bad dancers' and finding out more about them than whether they can do moves on the dance floor.. .

I would think the fact that the women are looking at cartoons to make their ratings would show how very narrow and simplistic this survey result is.

... And early indications from a few blood tests indicate that the better dancers may be healthier. So it indicates that people who are more supple and active are generally more healthy than people who are less supple and active? Well, that's some huge bombshell, isn't it...

[The Hen]

Oh fergodsake. Dancing (whether you like it or want to admit it) will give your potential partner SOME idea of what they can expect in the sack.

Fluid hip movements and a good sense of rhythm MAY let you score with that babe.

Don't think it won't.