[Faline]

A New Zealand scientist is spending thousands of dollars on a study of zebrafish in an effort to find out why some females are attracted to older males.
It it hoped the results could reveal why Catherine Zeta Jones fell for Michael Douglas with a 25 year age gap, explain the attraction between Prince Albert II of Monaco and his new wife who is 20 years younger than him and how Tom Cruise snared Katie Holmes when he is 16 years older than her.
Research fellow Dr Sheri Johnson at Otago University, New Zealand is putting a $345,000 (£220,000) grant towards finding out, using 700 zebrafish, reported Stuff.co.nz.
For years many people have argued a female tendency to be attracted to older males, goes against evolution as older men have a decline in sperm function and the chance of a birth defect also increases with age.
Zebrafish have been selected because they fertilise their eggs externally, making the process easier to mimic, according to the scientist.
Aside from ethical issues, Dr Johnson said trying to run the study in humans and controlling all of the variables would be too difficult.
She cites one human study which was a cross-cultural comparison done in the 1980 and the results indicated that women's preference for older men was related to their tendency to have accumulated more attractive resources called 'resource acquisition.'
Dr Johnson says that seems a relatively obvious attraction and even makes evolutionary sense in terms of safety and protection.
'But if a woman was coming to the end of her fertility window and she wanted to get pregnant and needed a sperm donor, she would definitely choose a young male over an older one, right?' she told Stuff.co.nz.
She says studies show a marked differences in semen volume, sperm motility and morphology in men in their thirties and fifties, which means they should be less attractive to women looking to have a child.
Increasing male age has also been linked to a number of medical complications, such as miscarriage and higher rates of autism and Down's Syndrome according to Dr Johnson.
But the number of men between 35 and 49 years old fathering children had increased in the past few decades, reports Stuff.co.nz.
John Peek, group manager of Fertility Associates, said a man's age did increase the chance of a cell disorder, but not as much as a woman's age.
'Jumping 30 years in the male's age – from 20 to 50 – might be the equivalent of jumping two or three years in a woman in her late 30s,' he said.
Mr Peek said said Dr Johnson's study could be very useful as current knowledge was based on indirect evidence and small samples sizes.
'There's going to be a bit of a difference between tiny little fish and people but it's a lot clearer if you know what the basics are and you can say `OK, what might be different between zebrafish and humans?' rather than saying we don't actually know the fundamentals at all.'

[Viking64]

I am going to donate $100,000 to this research.

[kellyhound]

what a waste of money.

[Sharon]

There is a 10 year gap between us - he older of course!

[rob666]

Money doesn't hurt an older guys chances any.

[Faline]

Originally Posted by Sharon. ↗

There is a 10 year gap between us - he older of course!

Same between me and my sons father

[scubahood]

yeah my guy is 20 years older..

it's maturity.. guys your own age are always so immature

[Steve]

Why waste money on this crap? women normally are attracted to older man, of course I prefer the older woman but I am a great believer in wisdom and experience and not fucking ignorance so younger women don't do shit for me, study that Mr Scientist.

[icheerthebull]

Originally Posted by kellyhound ↗

what a waste of money.

The study or what the guys pay to keep the younger women?

[xstunt1ngx]

Do they really need to study this? Here is the reason :

Men when older, have a much more stable career and probably earn much more than they did 20 years ago, did I forget to say, they got more money than younger bastards?

Reason : Money.

Try to deny it but it's a fact.