Lesbians on average turned out to have more ``masculine'' hands than heterosexual women -- with the index finger significantly shorter than the ring finger. There was no such difference in the hands of gay and straight men, however.
A brief summary of the study, led by Berkeley psychologist S. Marc Breedlove and undergraduates Terrance J. Williams and Michelle E. Pepitone, appeared yesterday in the science journal Nature.
Although the results may seem a bit puzzling, experts said it's only the latest of several studies that suggest hormones in the womb have a powerful affect on sexual orientation and behavior throughout life.
Previous research has found certain differences in brain structures as well as other anatomical distinctions between gays and straights.
The evidence is mixed, however, and nobody claimed the latest findings will settle the debate over how sexual orientation is shaped by biology versus environmental factors.
Nor can finger lengths be used as a reliable guide to very much of anything, although it's long been known that men tend to have longer fingers than women.
``The differences are subtle,'' said Raymond Blanchard, a pioneer in gender and sexuality studies at the University of Toronto's Center for Addiction and Mental Health. ``There's no way anybody could use this to screen a date.''
The latest study was based on the fact, which was already apparent to scientists, that males tend to have a different pattern of finger lengths than females.
In men, the index finger tends to be a bit shorter than the ring finger. These same two fingers on women are typically about the same length. The male-female difference tends to be more pronounced on the right hand, for reasons experts cannot explain, regardless of whether the person is left- or right-handed.
These gender differences can be picked up in very young children, strongly suggesting they arise because of prenatal influences. Based on a host of animal studies and other research, it's almost certainly a product of androgen levels -- testosterone and other male hormones -- in the womb.
Scientists now suspect that finger lengths may be a marker of how much a fetus was exposed to these masculinizing sex hormones. The same prenatal influences may affect behavior and sexual identity throughout life.
Breedlove and his Berkeley colleagues appear to be the first academic researchers to bother checking whether there is any appreciable difference in finger-length ratios linked to sexual orientation in adults.
They set up booths last summer at a gay pride event in Oakland, the annual Solano Stroll in Berkeley and at the Castro Street Fair in San Francisco. Fairgoers were offered a free $1 lottery ticket in exchange for having their hands photocopied and filling out a detailed questionnaire.
After examining the hands of 720 adults, Breedlove's team discovered that the average finger-length pattern for lesbians closely resembled that of males. That is, the index fingers on lesbians who were surveyed was judged to be significantly shorter than the ring finger.
Researchers concluded that ``at least some homosexual women were exposed to greater levels of fetal androgen than heterosexual women.''
Hand patterns between gay men and heterosexual men revealed no such difference. But the surveys yielded other intriguing clues.
It was already known that men with more than one older brother are slightly more apt to grow up to be homosexual than are firstborn males.
The new study suggested that males with older brothers are subjected to higher levels of androgens in the womb than are eldest sons.
As a result, the study says, men with more than one older brother have a significantly more masculine right hand than men without older brothers. That is, the right index finger is more often shorter than the ring finger on the same hand.
There was no such effect in men with older sisters.
Breedlove said it's a complete mystery as to how a mother's body could ``remember'' how many male children she had borne, where this signal was kept and how it could influence hormone levels of a later- born child.
He also cautioned against making too much of the differences in the hands of gay and straight women.
FINGER ANALYSIS
Researchers say heterosexual women usually have index fingers equal in length to their ring fingers. Lesbians on average have finger length similar to men's in which the index finger is shorter than the ring finger.
Typical female finger size
Index finger equal in length to ring finger
Typical male finger size
Index finger slightly shorter than ring finger
Source: Nature Chronicle Graphic
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