THE shape of women’s breasts may have evolved to reduce the risk of mothers
smothering their infants while they are feeding, suggests a British researcher.
“Partly because of the obsession with breasts as a sex object, there are big,
big gaps in our knowledge of how they actually work,” says Gillian Bentley, a
biological anthropologist at University College London.
Evolutionary biologists have long speculated on the reason for the shape of
the human breast. Compared to the breasts of other primates, they are unusually
large. Mothers among our close relatives, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, are
all but flat-chested.
Because…
