From Aristotle to Adam

The subject of why men have nipples has arisen lately. Of course, this is nothing new. The issue has caused much speculation from Aristotle to Darwin, no doubt way back to Adam. I’m sure that believers in evolution would say that male nipples are probably vestigial in nature. Men perhaps suckled offspring. In The Descent of Man, Darwin suggests the possibility that "long after the progenitors of the whole mammalian class had ceased to be androgynous, both sexes yielded milk, and thus nourished their young; and in the case of marsupials, that both sexes carried their young in marsupial sacks." Possibly.

Maybe they are evolutionary leftovers from some sort of strange camouflage, like the spots on a giraffe. Maybe man and the giraffe have a common ancestor. Who knows? Anything is possible with evolution theorists.

I have heard that men have nipples because that’s where God grasped him as He placed him on the earth, and then with His finger, poked him in the belly and said, "There you go." Hence the belly button. Of course, that was like a joke, for those who tend to take issues like this too seriously.

It’s my guess that God gave men nipples for aesthetic purposes. Without them, an obvious "something" would be missing. They give balance to the male body.

Men have nipples for the same reason God gave us one nose and not two, and two eyes and not one. That’s unless you think that a one-eyed two-nosed man would be attractive to women. I’m sure such a man would have some sort of a career in Hollywood, but probably not as a leading lady’s-man. So I think it’s fair to say that the male nipple is purely cosmetic.

The male moustache falls into the same category. I can’t think of why it exists other than for decorative purposes. Then again, it may have another function. Someone once looked at mine and said, "What makes your nose so important that it has to be underlined?"