sychronisation

[emjata]

I have lived with 4 other girls for 3 months. How come our menstrual cycle has slowly sychronised with each others?

[incitatus]

It is a common phenomenon. What causes it is pheromones. When women ovulate they give off pheromones that men detect on a subliminal level. Other women can also detect them and the effect is that slowly the menstrual cycle synchronises. This is thought to be an advantage in hunter-gatherer situations, where the men are away killing things for long periods of time. Synchronising oestrus would prevent any one woman having an unfair advantage, as it were, when the men came home. Or so the story goes. Maybe there is an evolutionary advantage in groups of women all wanting to tear phone books in half at the same time.

[andy hughes]

This is interesting - I work in an office with 23 women, and their cycles have not synchronised, although I have heard of the synchronisation system works - it must be governed by sharing living space, and not just work space. For the record, it should be great if it worked in the workplace - at the moment, I rely on a combination of intuition, insecurity, and naked fear! I know them well enough to have asked them to tell me if PMT is kicking in, and I'll sympathise as far as I'm able, but sometimes I find out the hard way!

[incitatus]

It depends on close contact for long periods. And on sharing, um, ablution spaces. Home is more likely to do this, though women working together for long hours do synchronise, particularly if they all share the same bathroom! Why on earth would you want them to synch? A whole workplace full of flashing eyed irrascible, bad tempered people? It would be like working with men!

[nickp]

It's true... Misery really does love company, and a pack of women sniping at each other spares men in the area from being the focus of their attentions