• Question: why do men have nipples?

    Asked by chloelou98 to Cesar, Emily, Jamie, Kate, Philippa on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Jamie Gallagher

      Jamie Gallagher answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I mentioned this in another question. It is an overspill from when we all started out as female embryos. Though this is very much biology. I’m looking at you Kate!

    • Photo: Emily Robinson

      Emily Robinson answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      My friend did a brilliant 3 minute explaination of this for a science compitition… I wish I could find the video clip online, but I can’t at the moment sorry!

    • Photo: Kate Clancy

      Kate Clancy answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      We didn’t start out female, we didn’t start out female! Females aren’t the default and also require a cascade of events in order to differentiate! See this question and answer:

      /copperj11-zone/2011/06/whys-a-females-body-different-to-a-males-body

      But at the same time, Jamie is kinda right!

      If a trait isn’t found on a sex chromosome, it will be expressed in both sexes. And from a developmental standpoint, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have a trait, so why remove it from one sex if the other needs it? It doesn’t hurt men to have nipples — some might say they are nice to have, in fact — so why go to the effort to remove the trait? Evolution is messy like that. Our ancestral history, and sometimes the needs of the other sex or our needs at different points in our lifespans, can dictate small things that seem to have no real use.

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