Athleticism Exposed: The “Real” Reason Why Humans Play Sports

Antoi Sayers
Staff Writer

    Imagine it. A sports player flies down a field, court, or pitch. They carry a spherical instrument made of

animal skin towards a set goal. Their lungs shrivel and contract. Their body purges itself of water, and their heart races far past a sustainable rate. Do they make it? That does not matter. What does matter is why they find themselves in this situation in the first place.

    Today, in America alone, millions of children, teenagers, and full grown adults will play a sport. Be it the three giants, football, basketball, and baseball, or less athletically taxing offerings like croquet, curling and golf. Almost none of these people will pinch themselves and ask why they put themselves through these acts that make no sense when explained out loud. What do they stand to gain by reaching these arbitrary and ultimately woefully unnecessary goals? Why do we play sports?

    It turns out that a large part of that answer lies in the culprit for all aggressive and competitive activities—the opposite sex. But what is it about sports that makes us attractive to our prospective mates? Researchers now believe symmetry is to blame, and that makes sense. Athletic talent, especially that which is given naturally, is very hard to come by, and those who have a half of their bodies significantly longer or shorter than the other half will have a much harder time playing, much less excelling at a sport.

    Karl Grammar, a German ethologist and evolutionary biologist, studies facial symmetry and how it affects those we are attracted to; his findings concluded, “faces created by combining individual faces into composites [were] shown to be more attractive than the individual faces.” It is biologically natural to find people with symmetrical faces and bodies more attractive. It is something that cannot be consciously controlled because of evolutionary traits gained when humans were nothing more than nomadic hunters and gatherers. This was when human survival was a lot less of a sure thing and our biggest enemies were bacteria.

    In his report on human symmetry, B. C. Jones, a Professor in the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow said, “disease and infections during physical development cause small imperfections (asymmetries). Thus only individuals who are able to withstand infections (those with strong immune systems) are successful in developing symmetric physical traits.” Those with strong immune systems are what we were looking for 2000 years ago, and it's what we look for now, whether we realize it or not. The biological arms race has not ended yet.

    These holdover traits are apparent in other unexplainable, but important, parts of human life like kissing. The act of two individuals pressing their germ infested mouths together and mixing their fundamentally different DNA with saliva is not necessary for any kind of relationship, yet almost every human has or will do it sometime in their lives. Researchers believe that this was a way of bolstering our own immune systems with the germs of another, thus getting our offspring used to certain diseases before they were born.

    Though most of us will never realize it, whether someone kicks a ball, hits a puck, or swings a bat, they don't do it for the fun or energy release that they believe they do. They do it because of the biological longing deep within them, the longing to attract someone special to share their life with.