Men with deep voices have more children, probably because they have a wider choice of mates, according to a study released.

“We found that men with deep voices have more children than their high-pitched counterparts,” said Coren Apicella, a graduate anthropology student at Harvard University, who spent six months in northern Tanzania last year, studying the nomadic, hunter-gatherer Hadza people.

The study, a collaborative effort between Harvard University in Massachusetts, McMaster University in Canada and Florida State University, was the first to try to determine if there is a link between voice pitch in men and “Darwinian fitness” in humans.

“Darwinian fitness, in lay terms, means the number of children we have,” said Apicella, yesterday, who told AFP that the research did not find a link between voice pitch and the children’s health or mortality rate.

The mortality rate of children fathered by men with high-pitched voices was not significantly greater than that of children fathered by deep-voiced men, she said.

“Based on these findings, we speculate that the associations reported between reproductive success and voice pitch in men are probably mediated by greater access to fecund women,” the study says.

“It doesn’t seem like deep-voiced men are passing on good genes to their offspring, as has been hypothesised in the past, but probably has to do with them having greater access to women,” said Apicella.