why do men have nipples?

Answer 1

When a baby is concieved for the first 8 weeks the embreo is a female, this is the only feature that stays for some reason!

Answer 2

Male nipples aren't exactly a genetic glitch: they are evidence of our developmental clock. In the early stages of life from conception until about 14 weeks, all human fetuses look the same, regardless of gender. At the tender age of 14 weeks post-fertilization , genetically-male fetuses begin to produce male hormones including testosterone. These hormones turn the androgynous fetus into a bouncing baby boy.

Here's where the developmental clock comes in. By 14 weeks, when the hormones turn on, the nipples have already formed. So, while our male fetus goes on to become a baby boy, he keeps his nipples, reminding all of us that people, male and female, started off the same way.

In most men, the nipples really don't change after this point, but some men can develop a condition called gynecomastia. In gynecomastia, the fatty tissue around the nipple develops and eventually appears similar to a female breast. This can occur whenever the testosterone level is lowered by medications, such as those that treat prostate cancer, and by natural hormonal changes due to obesity, adolescence or aging.

Luckily, most of us don't worry too much about male nipples, so men never have to worry about finding swimtrunks and a bikini top that fit.

Answer 3

The reason, according to the book "Why Do Men Have Nipples," by Leyner and Goldberg is because during development, the sex of the fetus is female and thus nipples emerge. It isn't until the beginning of sex differentiation that their function becomes established. The females will be programmed for lactation abilities and the males just are left with nipples.

Answer 4

The basic body plan for mammals is a female body plan, which is modified during development. Failure of this modification sometimes occurs due to various disorders, in which case an individual may be XY genetically but is female in appearance.

Actually, all of the "female bits" ARE present in the male, it's just that most of them areso highly modified you would not recognise them - eg. the scrotum is actually formed from the same initial tissues that in the female become the labia (known as the labioscrotal swelling, which appears around 3 weeks gestation, although further development of this tissue - into male or female - occurs around 9 weeks). I wont go into any more detail here as there may be younger readers for whom some of this is "inappropriate", but you can find all this information in any good developmental biology book and if you are really interested I suggest you go there.

(hey, I can't give you guys all the answers.... opening a book 'aint hard and you'll be able to place more things in context).

Answer 5

It's a left over part from when embryos initially develop.

All mammalian embryos are initially female and develop into males due to the presence of the Y chromosome.

Nipples develop before this stage and are not effected by the change of gender so they stay intact.

Answer 6

Men's nipples are a vestigial organ, which means they are no longer required for the use they were origianlly designed for due to evolutionary processes, another example of a vestigial organ is the appendix which now has no know uses in humans but was thought to be useful when we ate a diet of vegetables and raw meat as neanderthals

Answer 7

early stages of a human embryo is a female. when it grows in time it becomes a female or a male. according to Charles Davine we are still evolving, So in the future we might see nipples men.

Answer 8

because men are potentially turned off women and the x chromosome gives them nipples

Answer 9

because when a baby is concieved it starts out as female
only after a period of development do they start to develope into male or female ::

Answer 10

Its all part of evolution and genetics.

It's like why we still have a coccyx (hmm may have spelled that wrong) bone which is the remnant of a tail.