Center of body mass and the evolution of female body shape
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Among primates, the genus Homo has a unique sexual dimorphism in general body shape. The stenotypic female "hourglass figure" has often been attributed to sexual selection. Sexual dimorphism both in shape and in position of the center of body mass (CoM) emerges during puberty and is related to hormonal influences. These are only the proximal and not the ultimate causes of this feature. This article explores the hypothesis that the evolutionary (i.e., ultimate) reason for female body shape and male preference for a lower waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is due to the acquisition of bipedal locomotion and different biomechanical constraints on each sex. The demands of pregnancy and subsequently carrying infants may have more tightly constrained CoM in females than in males. A lower-position of CoM relative to height (RCoM=(CoM/height)*100%) would contribute to better stability during pregnancy and infant carrying. Using body measurements from 119 female students, we show that RCoM correlates negatively with only maximal thigh circumference and positively with only WHR and shoulder width. The relationship between RCoM and traits that best characterize female body shape seems to confirm a hypothesis of biomechanical selection pressure that may have acted on Homo female morphology, thus contributing to sexual dimorphism.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".