Women have proportionally longer legs than men? What is the evolutionary advantage of it?

[Rainn]

What is the evolutionary advantage of women have proportionally longer legs than men?

[Mopi The Dire Wolf]

better for us men to run our hands up and down them

[Jana]

They don't. Male skeletons are distingushed from female by proportionaly longer legs.

[Mingle]

Actually, men have longer legs than women on average.


This observation is purely anecdotal, though. There are studies which measure the lengths of men’s and women’s legs, arms, upper bodies, and so on. These measurements show that women have shorter legs and longer torsos than men as a proportion of their heights.

For the answer, I turned to Carnegie-Mellon University, where I received my B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Laura Lund, a student there, undertook the project to determine why women were uncomfortable on their bikes. She confirmed my research about women’s body proportions — shorter legs and longer upper bodies. But she also discovered that the center of mass of women’s body is not the same as men’s.

Bikes designed specifically for females are differentiated by providing a higher center of mass due to the proportionately shorter legs and longer torsos of women.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140701062336/http://www.womenscycling.ca/blog/georgena-terry/womens-body-proportions-different-mens/

As for the evolutionary reason why men have longer legs than women, maybe since men worked more, long distance travel was more required as a result, and longer legs help in that.