Or mom's just taking the opportunity to teach the kid how to swing.

In all seriousness though, my mom broke her ankle last year just falling backward while gardening. Bad angle and poor bone density worsened the fall. So even a feet or two could cause major damage.

If it were done as a single nerve in a direct route, it would be subject to damage from a jerking head motion. This way, the slack (and bundling) adds protection to individual nerves. And again, it works just fine, in ALL mammals.

Let's coin a new term. How about 'stress relief'?

Another point. The heart is functional before it descends into an expanding chest cavity, taking ancillary nerves along for the ride.

And lastly, the evidence points to incremental phenotypic alterations along with some jumps here and there. The first is indicative of environmental adaptations, with possible genetic manipulations [ID] on occasion.

In fact, we ourselves are on the cusp of being able to alter phenotypic outcomes, by PCR, electrophoresis, and subsequent spicing to alter structures and codes. For our progress at this point, search 'genetic engineering'.

While not proof of prior gene altering to alter phenotypes, it is at least evidence that it can be done, while at this juncture, no substantiating evidence exists for random mutations, HGT, and genetic drift to radically alter body plans. Just for minor quantitative adaptive alterations [pigmentation, bone density, fur and hair content, metabolism rates, and yes, cephalic index, essentially brain size increases].

IOW, the evidence clearly points to both microevolution, a likely 'designed-in' function to aid in survival, as well as ID for radical re-designs, possibly by multiple intelligentsia over vast time. Google MDT for more on that possibility.

But... This method doesn't take into account a difference of bone density or size of mouth and nasal cavity. This would measure a mass, but not weight. Even then, with the inner mouth and nasal cavity, not even that would be correct, unless you did it with your mouth open and sucked water into your nasal cavities, (effectively drowning yourself.)

This was the method I first thought of ass well, but then started to poke holes in the theory before they got to the answer. They are guessing using an "Average density." The number they claim to be the average would be the one factor that eliminates the outcome of getting a true weight.

People consume far less dairy in Japan, so bone density issues are more common than they are in America.

Really, though, they should have had girls in the commercial. Anorexia and bulimia are even more of a problem in Japan than bone density. Girls drinking a few glasses of milk more would be very healthy.

First, I'm arguing based on the assumption that it is a genetic condition. I am ignoring all homosexuals that are the result of environment. I don't contradict myself in my statements above for this reason. Homosexuality, if it is genetic, is a complex, multi-gene condition. You're miss-understanding what that means in terms of genetic inheritance. You can have two hetero parents with little bits and pieces of what can sometimes add up to a homosexual child when the genes mix right. The same occurs for height, hair color, skin pigmentation and skin conditions, cancer susceptibility, mental illness susceptibility, bone density, muscular development, cholesterol maintenance, glucose maintenance, ... I could go on all day here. In MANY of those cases, you get two parents that have offspring with very different characteristics... Still, those characteristics are based on what polymorphisms are present in what genes (or gene duplications/mutations/etc.), so in evolutionary time, if tendencies toward homosexuality lead to fewer homosexuals producing progeny, then those polymorphisms will slowly be lost from the gene-pool.

Since at least as I see it, sexuality isn't purely genetic (as I was assuming in my arguments for the sake of discussion), extinction is the wrong word, but at some point far in the future, the genetic component will be lost unless we intervene, which we almost certainly will by then anyway.

I heard that when the elderly break their hip, it usually just breaks by itself because of the loss of bone density? In this case I think he broke more than his hip in that fall.

Just thought I'd stop by and mention bone density has absolutely nothing to do about swimming, drowning. Last time I had a physics class it was caused by such mystical forces as "surface area" and "weight". I'm guessing that the south doesn't have that much of an education. Which also explains this stupid myth; these minority groups had no formal teaching about how to swim.

/sorry the Red Cross doesn't really know how to swim either...

Just want to mention that while in training to be a lifeguard we were taught by the Red Cross that African Americans have an increased bone density that causes them to sink faster than Caucasians. The article above mentions this as myth, but I taught swimming lessons for years and it generally seemed to be true.