How Men Can Decode Women's Menstrual Cycles
The clues are in her voice

“Are you on your period?” It’s a question most women have been asked at one point or another by their boyfriend or spouse during a disagreement. It turns out that some men actually can tell when it’s a woman’s time of the month—and it’s not because of bratty behavior.

In a study published online last month in the journal Ethology, psychologists Nathan Pipitone at Adams State College and Gordon Gallup at SUNY Albany asked three groups of men to listen to voice recordings of 10 women counting from one to five. Each woman was recorded four times over the course of one full menstrual cycle. (For those who aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of the female reproductive cycle, women are most fertile during ovulation, when their ovaries release an egg, and least fertile during menstruation, when they shed the unfertilized egg and the lining of the uterus.)

After the first group of men listened to all four recordings from each woman, played in random order, they were asked to guess which recordings were made during the women’s periods. The men had a one in four chance of guessing correctly, but they actually did so 35 percent of the time, a significant difference, the researchers say.

In 2008, Pipitone and Gallup showed that men find the voices of ovulating women more attractive than voices recorded during other points in the cycle, so for the second group in the new study, the researchers replaced the recording made closest to ovulation with one from a less fertile day. Even after the potentially telltale contrast was eliminated, the men pinpointed the voice recorded during menstruation 34 percent of the time.

Perhaps the most telling element of the study was the third experiment, in which a new group of men were not told that the research had anything to do with menstrual cycles. Instead they were asked to choose the most “unattractive” voice recording for each woman. They chose the menstrual recording significantly more often than was predicted by chance—again, 34 percent of the time.

In fact, according to the researchers’ calculations, all three groups singled out the voices recorded during menstruation more often than any of the other voices.

So what was it about the women’s voices that gave away their reproductive status? The men in group one who correctly identified the menstrual recordings said they could tell by the mood (bad versus good), quality (harsh versus smooth), pitch (low versus high) and speed (slow versus fast) of the women’s voices. When the second two groups were asked to score the voices based on these characteristics, they reported that menstrual voices sounded lower in mood, quality and pitch. “The men seemed to determine menstrual voices by picking the most unattractive voice,” Pipitone explains.

There’s already evidence that men subconsciously judge where a woman is in her cycle—lap dancers make 80 percent more money in tips when they’re ovulating compared to when they’re menstruating, according to a 2007 paper—but the new study is the first to demonstrate one way men make that determination.

A subconscious (and often conscious) aversion to menstruation makes sense in evolutionary terms, since males wanting to pass on their genes are better off seeking out females closer to ovulation. Over time, the ability to parse a woman’s menstrual cycle could have proliferated, as more perceptive men reproduced more successfully.

Pipitone says the adaptation is an example of the reproductive arms race known as sexually antagonistic coevolution, a phenomenon seen across living species, from humans to brine shrimp. Males show more interest in females when they’re fertile, so it makes sense that human females—who need a lot of help to raise their particularly helpless infants—hide their fertility status. (Female chimps, by contrast, broadcast their fertility with engorged Instruments.) Theoretically, human males retaliated by developing the ability to detect more subtle fertility cues such as those “leaked” by the female voice.

Hormones induce the vocal changes that give women away. “Vocal production is closely tied to our biology,” Pipitone says of men and women. For example, “Cells from the larynx and vagina are very similar and show similar hormone receptors.” The result is that, “The sound of a person’s voice contains a surprising amount of reproductively relevant information,” Gallup says. The obvious example: By speaking on the phone, we can determine a person’s gender and age. But researchers have also shown that voices alone can be used to directly and indirectly predict characteristics like facial appearance, body type, physical strength and even sexual behavior.

I think one of the most interesting results of the study is that across the board, men chose the menstrual voice around a third of the time. It would seem some men are more perceptive to women’s cycles than others. Pipitone and Gallup plan to investigate this question next.

Jennifer Abbasi is a science and health writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Follow Jen on Twitter (she's @jenabbasi) and email her at popsci.thesexfiles@gmail.com.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-01/how-men-can-decode-womens-menstrual-cycles

Photo Quiz! Can you tell which one of these women is ovulating and which one is menstruating?

Mmmhhhmmm...very interesting article. Thanks for sharing the information. I would agree with the researchers. I suffer from a severe cases of PMS and unless I take Vitamin B tablets,I can't imagine what my voice sounds like during those days .

PLS summarize , what do I look for

ITbomb: PLS summarize , what do I look for

To figure out ur chicks cycle You need to look out for the tone of her voice tone , mood (good or bad),the pitch and the basically when women are ovulating according to this study their voices are attractive.

ITbomb: PLS summarize , what do I look for

To figure out ur chicks cycle You need to look out for the tone of her voice tone , mood (good or bad),the pitch and the basically when women are ovulating according to this study their voices are attractive.. Or something like that.

i laugh!

. . . just gotta love science!

khukhi:

To figure out ur chicks cycle You need to look out for the tone of her voice tone , mood (good or bad),the pitch and the basically when women are ovulating according to this study their voices are attractive.. Or something like that.

Thank you

Money makes women moan, this is pure hogwash... Give her some peez or buy her some expensive stuff, she'll definitely forget about her menstral cycle.

@ OP,


I love women and anything related to women.


The one on the right to me seems she is ovulating.

I dont need to listen to her voice.

Signs to look out for when your woman is menstruating (emphasis on YOUR WOMAN not another woman) :

1. Too many pimples on her pumpkin face
2. Dry lips
3. Too much frowning, complaining and outbursts
4. She cries and complain of abdominal cramp
5. changes in her nyash curvature (i dont know why)
6. full breast with succulent hard n.iples hehe
7. Too much body scent. (disgusting)
8. She will NEVER be in the mood
9. On rare occasions, you might find a tadpole on your bed, dont be alarmed, her egg just hatched

Thank me later

Interesting topic. Science is all we need.

Interesting topic. Science is all we need. ;DInteresting topic. Science is all we need.

interesting

27naira: I dont need to listen to her voice.

Signs to look out for when your woman is menstruating (emphasis on YOUR WOMAN not another woman) :

1. Too many pimples on her pumpkin face
2. Dry lips
3. Too much frowning, complaining and outbursts
4. She cries and complain of abdominal cramp
5. changes in her nyash curvature (i dont know why)
6. full breast with succulent hard n.iples hehe
7. Too much body scent. (disgusting)
8. She will NEVER be in the mood
9. On rare occasions, you might find a tadpole on your bed, dont be alarmed, her egg just hatched

Thank me later

why dry lip? I agree with other signs.

27naira: I dont need to listen to her voice.

Signs to look out for when your woman is menstruating (emphasis on YOUR WOMAN not another woman) :

1. Too many pimples on her pumpkin face
2. Dry lips
3. Too much frowning, complaining and outbursts
4. She cries and complain of abdominal cramp
5. changes in her nyash curvature (i dont know why)
6. full breast with succulent hard n.iples hehe
7. Too much body scent. (disgusting)
8. She will NEVER be in the mood
9. On rare occasions, you might find a tadpole on your bed, dont be alarmed, her egg just hatched

Thank me later

what manner of physician are u??
awon eleyi badt gaaan

Beync:
why dry lip? I agree with other signs.

Yes it does happen. I KNOW

Did your egg hatch tadpole? **kidding**

all noted

27naira:
9. On rare occasions, you might find a tadpole on your bed, dont be alarmed, her egg just hatched

Beync:
why dry lip? I agree with other signs.

you agree with the tadpole part? Gosh!!! What does dat even mean?

27naira:

Yes it does happen. I KNOW

Did your egg hatch tadpole? **kidding**

..ROFLMAO!!!...u are 1 funny, crazy son of a gun.

ummm...I think there's more to it.

Na lie jor!
Some women (including moi) have so adapted lots of things that work to keep them comfortable and lively during menses and no soul can ever know except they tell!
Make dm go find another research do!

No wonder!

slimyem: Na lie jor!
Some women (including moi) have so adapted lots of things that work to keep them comfortable and lively during menses and no soul can ever know except they tell!
Make dm go find another research do!

No dey lie here joor

You never adapt anything, you still dey whine. hehe

Yes it does happen. I KNOW

Did your egg hatch tadpole? **kidding**[/quote]
nah
u most be experienced in field

slimyem: Na lie jor!
Some women (including moi) have so adapted lots of things that work to keep them comfortable and lively during menses and no soul can ever know except they tell!
Make dm go find another research do!

adapt?? U be Destop charger?

27naira: I dont need to listen to her voice.

Signs to look out for when your woman is menstruating (emphasis on YOUR WOMAN not another woman) :

1. Too many pimples on her pumpkin face
2. Dry lips
3. Too much frowning, complaining and outbursts
4. She cries and complain of abdominal cramp
5. changes in her nyash curvature (i dont know why)
6. full breast with succulent hard n.iples hehe
7. Too much body scent. (disgusting)
8. She will NEVER be in the mood
9. On rare occasions, you might find a tadpole on your bed, dont be alarmed, her egg just hatched

Thank me later

@ no.s 2, 5, 7 dnt knw abt dt.
@ no. 8 very very wrong. Some women are widly in d mood at dt time of the month. Somethng abt d high level of secretion of hormone oestrogen.
@ no. 4 many women (like me) don't xperience abdominal cramps at all.
The rest of ur list is correct I guess. Ders definitely bratty and bitchy behviour.

i believe its called PMSing

blogger1.0:

you agree with the tadpole part? Gosh!!! What does dat even mean?

Noo, my bad i dint take note of that

27naira: I dont need to listen to her voice.





9. On rare occasions, you might find a tadpole on your bed, dont be alarmed, her egg just hatched

Thank me later

Whao! The Discovery Channel still have a lot to do