A woman raises the pitch of her voice during her most fertile period of the month in an un-conscious boost to her femininity, according to a study in the British journal Biology Letters.
A pair of scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles asked 69 women to make voice recordings when they were at high and low fertility points in their menstrual cycle.
The closer a woman was to ovulation, the more, she raised her pitch, they found.
The increase in tone was only slight - it wasn't Minnie Mouse on helium - but the peaks were enough to be picked up by the voice decoder and presumably by the male ear as well.
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The difference was greatest on the two days preceding ovulation, when fertility within the cycle is the highest.
Curiously, this distinction only occurred when the volunteer, among the sentences she was asked to say, introduced herself.
The scientists suggest the pitch change happens because men are lured to a more "feminine" voice in a woman.
Sexual signals and reproductive fitness are strongly associated with voice, they say.
"Men prefer higher pitch relative to lower pitch in the same women and these judgements are affected by cues of social interest in the speech," say the pair of scientists. - Sapa-AFP
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This article was originally published on page 8 of Cape Argus on October 11, 2008
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