Boys with ring fingers longer than their index fingers tend to do better in math, according to a new study by psychologists at the University of Bath. (Thanks, Slashdot.) This would be nothing more than an interesting tidbit that might make me check my son’s hands next time I cut his nails, except that it follows other research indicating that women with longer relative ring fingers are more likely to have high athletic ability and to be lesbians. Gay men follow this pattern as well, but somehow only when they have several older brothers. The Bath study also concluded that shorter ring fingers on girls predict better verbal skills. Higher testosterone levels in the womb appear to be the cause of longer ring fingers and their attendant traits.
Having passed my genes on to someone, I consider myself now fully qualified to speculate wildly on any and all aspects of genetics. Does this mean that lesbians are inarticulate jocks? Or softball-playing mathematicians? Would it follow that boys with shorter ring fingers are more likely to be gay and have better verbal skills, thus accounting for the preponderance of gay male poets?
Well, no—or at least not categorically. There are lesbian poets aplenty (not to mention all of us dyke bloggers), and the father of computer science, Alan Turing, is proof that one can be a gay man, a mathematical genius, and a world-class athlete. This just goes to show that when it comes to some of her secrets, Mother Nature is still giving all of us the finger.