CARNAL NATION

For you ladies out there who like to indulge your sweet (ahem) tooth with eye candy, don't expect to spawn much in the way of fruit from your loins. New research suggests that attractive men produce less sperm during sex than ugly men. Call it arrogance and egotism if you like, but scientists prefer to chalk it up to evolution. Scientists believe that like chickens and fish (yes, the comparisons may seem especially apt), attractive men are hard-wired to preserve sperm during individual encounters in order to increase their chances of impregnating as many females as possible. University College London researcher Sam Tazzyman says, "The more attractive a male is, the more females will be willing to mate with him, reducing the value of each mating to him. This means it is optimal for him to contribute fewer sperm per mating." This strategy, though some would call it an attitude, actually maximizes the number of children an attractive man sires overall. Tazzyman adds, "Less attractive males secure fewer matings but value each of them more highly, and by allocating more sperm to each mating make the most of their meagre opportunities."

Rejection aside, it seems that physical beauty is a form of contraception. Perhaps if the British had incorporated attractive men into the failed Young People's Development Programme, the teen pregnancy rate in the U.K. might not be so ugly. Interestingly, this new research doesn't include data on the additional attractiveness of the drips, spots, and lesions all those pretty boys might pick up as they pick up all those women. With all due respect to latex, we wonder, following these findings, if ugliness correlates to safer sex. It most likely correlates to gratitude, and you'll know just how much gratitude in about nine months. And it will likely have a face that only a mother could love.