Size matters – but let’s not work ourselves into extinction over it

Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who had size twelve feet; now there are shoes of that size scattered around our house like small canvass boats just waiting for those of us with average sized feet to trip over.

The biggest guy in our class was about six foot three, and he had a clear view of all in front of him because nobody else came close. Now we live in a land of giants where everyone seems to top six foot.

Look at those old black and white videos of sporting classics and compare the protagonists in them to the hurlers, footballers or rugby stars of today – it’s like they’re coming from two different planets.

Of course, this obsession with physique also extends to the gym where our sporting heroes mould that six-foot four-inch frame into the equivalent of a stone wall. You meet them for real and it’s like a cloud suddenly came to block out the sun.

It’s not that we were small or our sporting heroes were puny; far from it – it’s just that, as the Yanks might say, everything is bigger these days.

Which, as it turns out, is not necessarily a good thing – because unless the male and female of the species are somewhere around the same size, scientists fear for the future of the human race.

Because researchers have found that the greater the size difference between the sexes, the greater the chance a species will become extinct.

That said, there’s no immediate danger because the men haven’t suddenly grown to twice the size of the women, and anyway, the scientists are basing their analysis on extinct crustaceans.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.