Re:Exercise Releases Brain-Healthy Protein
by omalleyt on Wednesday June 29, 2016 @01:28AM
(#11999678)
Well, male nipples are spandrels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)
That is, they're useful for the female and not particularly harmful for the male, so they live on.
It's also an instance of DRY (don't repeat yourself) "coding" in our DNA: basically males and females carry the same instructions, with a bunch of randomly interspersed if/else conditions that hinge on the presence of testosterone (coded for in the small Y chromosome)
Unless it's explicitly linked to surviving natural selection before reproduction, it's more likely that this finding is just a pointless by-product of another biomolecular pathway, even though it may have some discernible benefits.
It's like trying to puzzle out why there are nipples on male mammals - it usually devolves to some creative stories and hand waving.