Tattoos and Piercings May Advertise Good Health
Posted by Science Oxford on December 27, 2009 | comments
This is interesting, so it may be the case that we are not too far removed from our animal counterparts!
Visit this page »Tattoos and body piercings—common worldwide since ancient times—may exist because they effectively advertise robust health and good genes to potential mates, a study proposes.
Biologists theorize that many risky, costly and apparently useless behaviors persist among animals because of what they communicate to potential mates, rivals and others. For example, an expensive Rolex watch may be no more useful or prettier than a Timex, but for some people it serves a function by creating an aura of wealth.
A field of evolutionary biology called signaling theory examines such behaviors.
“Honest signals” are defined as signals that are hard to fake and thus make better advertisements. For instance, the Rolex may not show true financial solidity; you might have just overdrawn your credit card or be running a Ponzi scheme.
On the other hand, if you stick a metal pin through your cheek without suffering any ill effects, that may actually say something about your immune system, especially if disinfection hasn’t been invented yet. Thus, it could be an honest signal of health, if perhaps not of the sharpest mind.
Slawomir Koziel of the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Anthropology in Wroclaw, Poland, and colleagues decided to explore whether body-decorated people actually do have better health than average.
They measured levels of bodily symmetry in 200 people with and without tattooes and unconventional piercings. Many scientists consider such symmetry as an indicator of healthy development.
Symmetry was significantly higher in the tattooed-and-pierced group, especially in men, the researchers found.
“Higher body symmetry of the men having tattoos or piercing indicates that this type of body decoration in the Western society can be related to the honest signal of biological quality only for men,” Koziel and colleagues wrote, describing their findings in a paper slated for publication in the research journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
“Both tattoos and piercings can present health risks,” such as due to blood-borne diseases, they noted, and it’s the ability to take such risks successfully that offers the biological signal.
It hasn’t been clear to date why tattooes and piercings are done, the researchers said. Such decorations can mark membership in a group of some sort, yet often only some group members opt for these badges of membership. One possible explanation was that people get tattooes and piercings in order to distract from some physical shortcoming, but the study results seemed to contradict this view, Koziel and colleagues remarked.
They also found that among males in their study, the most common tattoo locations were arms and legs, whereas in females it was back and stomach. Piercing were most often on the face (76 percent) of males and on the abdomen (46 percent) of females.
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Jan
OK, but surely for this to work we must know, or subconsciously know, how our immune system will fare against such bodily invasion – i.e. “I know I have a good immune system therefore I shall get a tattoo”. Or is the reverse true as well?: both people with good and people with bad immune systems get tattooed and piercings, those who survive get to reproduce. I suppose this works – you know you take a risk when you modify yourself, but if you think you are doing it for any reason other than to get laid you are just kidding youself right?
……time to get inked up!