Why?
In: Biology
Because they evolved so. In most primates, sexual dimorphism exists and results in larger males because that’s what was selected for in their evolutionary history. In other animals, things might be different, in many fish, females of the species are much larger, similarly to insects. In many bird species there is little to no dimorphism, or at least size wise.
Males are usually the ones that fight, be it to protect or to get or keep resources, while females are usually the ones that nurture and take care.
That is a general rule in primates, we’re not special in that regard.
Haters are down voting this. Dim wits, it’s Biology not sexism
Testosterone builds muscle mass passively. Meaning even without resistance training, someone will put on muscle mass with the presence of testosterone.
Men going through puberty will receive a fuckton of testosterone compared to women, and continue doing so as long as they have nuts.
In addition, men also have higher levels of human growth hormone than women when going through puberty, and will *on average* grow a larger and denser frame than women.
I’m sure there’s a lot of other contributing details, but thats in broad strokes why.
A woman can train herself stronger than a man, but a man has a much easier time building strength in general.
As a reference, most female Olympic records are broken every year by 15-17 year old “men”.
Not sure if you mean biologically or in terms of evolution? In any case, men have much, much higher testosterone which drives hypertrophy (muscle mass accumulation) among other biological factors. Evolution-wise, having more muscle is a disadvantage, all things being equal, as it needs a lot of energy to maintain. This suggests human females did not need that extra mass whereas human males did, so there were clearly a divergence of mass need in gender roles. For females, saving that extra energy means more success for offsprings, just like walking on two legs saves energy, same goes for cooking food instead of eating raw. Men have more mass likely because of the needs of hunting, endurance, etc. Mind you, the differences between human genders is not as stark as in other species where the differences can be massive, and in some cases reversed (female incredibly bigger and stronger than males). It all has to do with evolution and which characteristics were needed for more successful reproduction.
Testosterone is a hell of a drug. There’s no significant difference in physical capabilities of prepubescent boys and girls but once puberty hits the male body is essentially producing its own performance enhancing drugs.
If you mean why does male physiology do this and female physiology not, that’s just evolutionary roles. For most mammals selective pressures favoured strong aggressive males that would fight off threats and competitors and females that would nurture their young.
Higher brain function is a relatively recent thing and evolution doesn’t really have any mechanism that removes traits that are no longer necessary so on a purely biological level we’re sort of stuck with a bunch of stuff that was mostly helpful hundreds of millions of years ago when the evolutionary line was a small rodent-like creature.
Men tend to have more muscle mass compared to women because their bodies produce higher levels of testosterone, a hormone that helps build and maintain muscles. Men also have denser bones and larger organs, which also contribute to their overall physical strength. These are scientifically proven biological differences between men and women that mean men are physiologically evolved to be stronger. And they evolved to be stronger due to evolutionary pressures related to their roles in physically providing for their families in early human societies. Natural selection then favored traits in men that enhanced their ability to perform physically demanding tasks, leading to the physical development we see today compared to women.
Its not just a men / women thing. On average, male babies are bigger and stronger than female babies. I’m adding this because some people think the difference is due to puberty. But no – dimorphism starts before birth.
Because women preferred to mate with stronger males because the were more likely to bring back food and defend the family successfully.
If women would have preferred to mate with big bellied short and weak males we would have looked totally different now 😛
Men tend to have stronger bones, more muscle attachment points on those bones and more muscle because of testosterone. It’s common for female athletes especially strength athletes to abuse testosterones to help build muscle mass. I’ve seen studies where groups of men either follow the weight, lifting program or took testosterone without exercising, and those taking testosterone gained more muscle mass than the man who actually worked out. This means men tend to be larger in general. Fit men also tend to have a lower body fat percentage than fat women meeting pound for pound more of their overall weight is muscle and bone.
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