Does “couple look” really exist? The answer may surprise you...

There's a lot of research showing that long-term partners tend to look alike. But is that because they look alike from the beginning, or because they become more alike over time? Maybe because of a shared diet, lifestyle, mannerisms, or some other factor?

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To find out, a research team at Stanford University in the United States collected photo data of 517 couples, which were taken shortly after their marriage and decades later. They used advanced facial recognition software and manual judgment methods, and the results showed that although long-term partners do tend to look alike, they do not become more and more alike over time. In other words, this study supports the claim that we tend to choose partners who look like us.

"This makes facial appearance consistent with other traits, such as interests, personality, intelligence, attitudes, values, and well-being," they wrote. "They initially appear similar but do not converge over time."

But while we may not become more alike in appearance, our skin microbiomes certainly do over the years. In a study conducted a few years ago, scientists decided to analyze the skin microbiomes of cohabiting couples. They found that living together significantly affects the microbiomes on each other's skin.

To conduct the study, researchers collected samples from volunteers from many areas of their bodies, including the upper eyelids, nostrils, armpits, torso, back, navel and palms.

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The effect of living together on the microbiome was so dramatic that a computer algorithm was able to identify cohabiting partners based on their skin microbiota alone with 86 percent accuracy. The most similar microbiota on the body of cohabiting partners was on their feet. This is not surprising, since many of us walk around our homes barefoot.

Despite the striking similarities in the skin microbiomes of these partners, in some body sites, the gender of the volunteers was more important than whether they lived together. For example, the researchers found that the microbial communities on the inner thighs of people of the same sex were more similar than those of cohabiting partners.

Source: Reference News

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