Evolutionary biologist Leigh Simmons at the University of Western Australia has squashed everything we thought we knew about manliness with a recent study that revealed men with deep, sexy voices tend to have lower sperm counts.

WHAT?!

I don't know about you man-lovers out there, but a baritone boy can boost my libido by merely reciting the alphabet. The booming vibration of a low-town voice screams, “I can protect you from a hungry pack of wolves with one hand and make you come five times with the other,” and you're damn right I'll put out.

What Simmons' research seems to suggest is that, as an evolutionary tactic, men with lower sperm count may have found other means to compete with the more fertile male folk by acquiring traits that some women innately associate with masculinity.

Strong jawline, big biceps, broad stance, low-pitched voice. You get the idea. And it works – mainstream media's picks for manliest men in America tend to be the dudes who fit that criteria, and I'm pretty sure People magazine didn't ask Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, or David Beckham for sperm samples before deeming them the Sexiest Men in America.

Simmons and his team took to a college campus to complete this initial study, finding 54 heterosexual men and 30 heterosexual women to make it happen. They asked each woman to rate each man's masculinity according to how their voices sounded, and as you can expect most of them marked the Barry White wannabes as the most attractive.

But then the guys were told to jerk it into a cup, and each sample was examined to count the number sperm and how strong their swimming skills were.

Barry White. He's got the voice, but does he got the sperm?

Barry White. He's got the voice, but does he got the sperm?

The quality of sperm was relatively solid regardless of voice pitch, but Simmons and his crew noticed that men with more sexually appealing voices had perfectly active sperm, just less of them.

“In our evolutionary past, [masculine] men would have had greater reproductive success, leading to sexual dimorphism [differences between men and women] in voices, faces, bodies, etcetera,” Simmons told National Geographic.

So does this mean that men who featured more masculine traits got laid more often, increasing their chance at procreating, and therefore making their telltale voices, facial features and other manly bits and pieces more prevalent?

Not necessarily. But it does make sense that these features are historically more appealing to women looking for a mate who can protect her and her imminent offspring.

Poindexter certainly can outsmart the quarterback, but at the threat of an impending attack which would you rather stand between you and your foes?

Exactly.

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.