Avatars Help to 'Breed' The Perfect Body

(News Today) - Thousands of men and women from around the world have come forward to take part in an experimental Sydney-based sex project that aims to "breed" the ideal body.

An "avalanche" of volunteers from Afghanistan to Belarus have taken part in the study in recent weeks by rating the attractiveness of computer-generated avatars representing male and female bodies of every shape and size.

The main aim of the University of NSW project is to understand how individual features of the human body influence attractiveness.

To determine the perfect body shape, the least popular body types will slowly be culled, as the researchers attempt to virtually "breed" new body shapes from the existing avatars.

With more than 11,000 responses in just a few weeks, researchers believe they might be able to halve the time planned to complete the project.

"We initially intended to take a year, but if the visit rate keeps growing like this we will be done in six to eight months," Professor Rob Brooks said.

Researchers plan to work through six or more generations of avatars to narrow down the ideal body.

"We are about to launch generation two of male bodies and as soon as we can after that we will launch generation three of the females," Brooks said.

Brooks, who has a special interest in sexual selection, sexual competition and mate choice, said that, although experts talk about measures such as body mass index or waist-hip ratio, researchers know surprisingly little about attractiveness in a scientific sense.

"But obviously there's a whole lot more to attractiveness than numbers - people are attracted by a whole package of things," he said.

Although the research is being conducted primarily to shed light on the physical traits that determine attractiveness, the scientists hope it will have other applications, such as helping people to dress according to their body shapes.

"We find that women are almost as likely to rate women as they are men, but men are much less likely to rate men than women," Brooks said.

The project was originally launched in March with only female bodies, but the same number of male bodies was recently added, alongside the second generation of female bodies.

Brooks said the biggest surprise has been the 64 responses from people living in Afghanistan.

"Further analysis will tell us if it is native Afghans or troops and peacekeepers," he said.

Source : kompas.com

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