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titleSpot the difference

subject date24-05-2022

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caption@P@ 1 36 PHOTOGRAPHY CORBIS / GETTY IMAGES SPOT the difference There are some very obvious distinctions between men and women, but there are also some important (or simply fascinating) less obvious ones. By Helen Foster Men h ave BIGGER NOSES As puberty hits, around the age of 11, a male nose grows at a greater rate than that of a female, both externally and inside the nasal cavity. “It’s not simply because they have bigger faces, but we do think it may be because they have greater body mass,” says Dr Nathan Holton from the University of Iowa. That greater body mass needs more oxygen and the larger your nose, the more air you inhale. Women have A BETTER SENSE OF SMELL According to research from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in the US, women can detect odours at lower concentrations than men do, particularly during ovulation. Exactly why isn’t known, although it has been found that women register odour in more parts of their brain than men, but it’s believed it might be a protective mechanism designed to stop us exposing a foetus to things that might harm it. Women have a higher risk of urinary tract infections While both male and female bladders have the same capacity, women do have a disadvantage in matters urinary. The urethra, the pipe through which urine leaves the body, is four to fi ve times longer in men than women (20cm to our 4-5cm). “And this short distance increases the risk of bacteria entering the bladder and causing infection,” says urological surgeon Samantha Pillay. Emptying the bladder eff ectively is one of the best ways to reduce the risk of bacteria build-up. A man’s digestive system WORKS FASTER While on the surface both genders’ digestives systems look the same, “in the normal digestive process food leaves a man’s stomach a third faster than a woman’s and liquids leave twice as quickly,” says Dr Marianne Legato, author of Eve’s Rib: the Groundbreaki

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titleSpot the difference

subject date24-05-2022

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caption@P@ 1 37 PHOTOGRAPHY CORBIS / GETTY IMAGES Women are better WITH THEIR HANDS The smaller your fi ngers the better your sense of touch – and women’s fi ngers are usually smaller than men’s. According to researcher Daniel Goldreich from Canada’s McMaster University, the benefi t may come because while we all have the same number of touch receptors on our fi ngertips, in people with smaller fi ngers they’re closer together, which may allow them to sense fi ner details. “As yet we don’t know if there’s any large-scale benefi t to this, but you could speculate that it may make it easier to learn fi ne sensorimotor skills like those required to play musical instruments, repair watches – or perform surgery,” he says. WOMEN SEE COLOURS BETTER Colour vision genes are situated on the X chromosome and women have two of these. Not only does this lower the risk of colour blindness, experts at the US’s University of Maryland found it increases the likelihood that women will get a genetic variation that increases colour perception. On top of this, up to 50 per cent of women also have extra colour-detecting receptors in the eyes, improving colour vision further. When these women, who are known as tetrachromats, look at a rainbow they don’t see just seven colours, they see 10. SMOKING IS WORSE FOR WOMEN If a man and a woman smoke the same number of cigarettes in their lifetime, the woman has a 20 to 70 per cent greater risk of lung cancer. “We don’t know why – it may be that something diff ers inside the lungs, or in the cigarettes women choose to smoke,” says Professor Matthew Peters from Lung Foundation Australia. One diff erence studies have found is women are more likely to have a faulty gene which limits our ability to neutralise cancer-causing compounds in cigarette smoke. This may make women more vulnerable to damage from second-hand smoke too. Me n SWEAT MORE When Japanese researchers measured p