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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

It is not only animals that rely on physical cues to gauge the fertility of potential rivals for a mate, an unusual study asserted on Wednesday.

Without knowing it, human women seem to be able to recognise others in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycle [phys.org], around ovulation, simply by looking at their faces, it said.

And intriguingly, this ability was pronounced in women with high levels of oestradiol, a female sex hormone linked to high general fertility.

The findings implied that more fertile women, who are likely to have more children in their lifetime, "are better at guarding their mate from potential adultery," study co-author Janek Lobmaier of the University of Bern told AFP.

The paper was published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Previous research had shown that men prefer portraits of women taken around the ovulation period over those of the same women in a non-fertile phase.

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