• Question: why do boys have bigger adams apples

    Asked by elizabethlee to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 28 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      The adam’s apple is cartilage which surrounds the larynx in the throat. During puberty the voice box elongates and when the voicebox drops in boys, the adam’s apple becomes more noticeable. It isn’t that the lump is actually bigger, but the angle it is at allows it to be viewed more easily externally, giving the appearance it is bigger in men.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      “Medical explanation: The Adam’s apple (termed Laryngeal Prominence) is a protrusion of the thyroid cartilage making up the body of the larynx. It’s more prominent in males because the thyroid cartilage elongates during puberty, and so protrudes out further. Two layers of cartilage meet at and angle of 90 degrees in males, 120 degrees in females.”

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      It’s all to do with hormones!

      Both boys and girls make testosterone in the glands just above their kidneys (‘the adrenal glands’), but the testes are a major site of production of testosterone, so boys have more of it.

      We know testosterone is linked to muscle growth, (that’s why testosterone injections used to be abused by body builders both male and female) and it it thought to be linked also to larengeal development (both Gem and Paige have mentioned already that the larynx is the voicebox and is responsible for the adams apple protrusion).

      If testosterone boosts the growth of the larynx this would explain why the growth is different in boys and girls, and why women bodybuilders who use testosterone to build more muscle sometime develop a bit of an adam’s apple!

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