Abstract

Body size is crucial for determining the outcome of competition for resources and mates. Many species use acoustic cues to measure caller body size. Vision is the pre-eminent sense for humans, but visual depth cues are of limited utility in judgments of absolute body size.The reliability of internal body proportion as a potential cue to stature was assessed with a large sample of anthropometric data, and the ratio of head height to body height (HBR) was found to be highly correlated with stature. A psychophysical experiment was carried out to investigate whether the cue actually influences stature judgments. Participants were shown pairs of photo-
graphs of human figures in which HBR had been manipulated systematically, and asked to select the figure that appeared taller. Results showed that figures with a relatively small HBR were con-sistently perceived as taller than figures with a relatively large HBR. Many classical statues such as Michelangelo's David depart from the classical proportions defined in Leonardo's Vitruvian
Man. A supplementary experiment showed that perceived stature in classical statues also depends on HBR. Michelangelo's David was created with the HBR of a man 165 cm (5 ft 5 in) tall.