I tend to pop out of bed when my baby daughter makes even the slightest of whimpers in the middle of the night. I'm not at all surprised, then, to hear about research from the British company Mindlab showing that the sound most likely to wake women is that of a crying infant. The New York Times' Motherlode has more this morning:
What might be surprising is the suggestion that “these differing sensitivities may represent evolutionary differences that make that make women sensitive to sounds associated with a potential threat to their children while men are more finely tuned to disturbances posing a possible threat to the whole family,” as MindLab psychologist David Lewis suggested to the Daily Telegraph in London.
Oh - and the sound most likely to wake men? A car alarm. Crying doesn't make the top 10 list.
