In the human world, a small number of females get a dispropriate amount of male attention. IE, every man at a party stares at the same hot girl. At a club, practically every guy there will hit on the same small handful of women while the rest of the girls get far less attention.
Does anything comparable exist for females in the animal kingdom? Where there’s a female so desirable that all the males are particularly interested in her? Like horses, say – will male horses mate with whatever’s available, or do they all go after the same female?
I know some animal species have alpha males who get far more sex than other males. But are there “supermodel gorgeous” zebras or giraffes or walruses?
I think the concept of supermodels requires mass media. Interactions between animals are all done on a one-on-one basis.
Male animals probably find some females of their species more attractive than others. But for most animals, the primary biological urge is to mate. So if the best-looking female around is mobbed by her admirers, it’s a better strategy to try to score with her less attractive sister who’s being ignored.
Two big factors for human attractiveness are apparent health and symmetry.
I assume a healthy lioness with a nice symmetrical body makes the lion’s slinky go… boing boing boing… moreso than it might for a lioness that’s just kinda’ weird looking due to asymmetry and looks weak.
It’s hard to see how. Those animals are all harem species AFAIK, that means that the males try to mate with as many females as possible, and then have no more role in the care of the young. With that pattern the role of female attractiveness is minimal. Every female will get to mate with the same male no matter how genetic suitable she is. The male loses nothing from mating with unsuitable females so there is little point in even understanding attractiveness.
Humans are different insofar as males give a lot of time to their offspring, and the males have to spend so much time courting the constantly receptive females that they can’t establish huge harems. Because male reproductive options are limited there is a massive incentive to spend time courting the most genetically fit females and caring for the young sired with those females. And of course the most genetically fit females are those that are percieved as most attractive or vice versa.
IOW attractiveness is only important for individuals that have to invest energy in courting and rearing and so limit their reproductive opportunities. So most female animals have a concept of attractiveness, but most males will mate with any and all females with little evidence of preference.
So if you want supermodel animals you will need to look at species where the males invest a lot of effort in courting and rearing, such as humans and some birds. When you look at those species you will see that males will put more effort into courting some females over others, which suggests that those females are the local beauties.
Well, if you ovariectomize rats then treat them with estradiol to simulate their estrus cycle and induce mating behavior, then put males in with them and score the behavior, males definitely respond to different females differently. Sometimes they’ll very aggressively pursue a female, and sometimes they don’t seem to care that she’s even there. It seems to depend on a lot of factors- the age of the male, the age of the female, how many females he’s mated with, etc., but there does also seem to be some variation in female attractiveness.
Some females, all the males we put in with them chase them around the whole time they’re together, whereas others aren’t nearly as motivating. Other females were irresistible to some males but “meh” to others, so there seemed to be a bit of variability. It may be a scent thing, but a lot of it is behavior. Some rats in estrus exhibit obvious ear wiggling and bunny hopping behaviors that make them more attractive, so obviously the females that “acted sexy” got more action.
That’s my sum total of experience with relative animal attractiveness, and, not being rats, we didn’t even attempt to quantify the attractiveness of each female. We just noticed that the desirable females were better for our experiments because we were studying female behavior, and the more “attractive” the female was, the easier it was for us to get good scores for her.
I’m not sure that answers your question, but to sum up: in my experience, some rats are more attractive to males then others, so an extra-attractive rat seems plausible to me.
Does the fact that many animals have a limited annual reproductive cycle have much to do with the non selectiveness of mating? In other words, if humans were only in “heat” one month a year as opposed to once a month would we be less selective as to whom we get it on with?
It probably has more to do with the amount of combined effort it takes to raise a human child and the fact that we’re smart enough know how much effort it is and that any given woman is going to have a limited number of chances to have and raise a baby.
Rats have about a 4 day estrous cycle, and they’re not really that selective.
All I can think of is all the animal species where it is the male who puts on the show to attract the mates. Peacocks, cardinals, lions, mandrills, guppies, etc.
I remember reading a study a while back about how lionesses preferred lions with large, dark manes to males with smaller or lighter colored manes. So maybe a lion with a large, black, studly mane could be considered a supermodel.
I can’t see how that would make any difference assuming that other behaviours and preferences didn’t change. A male is still going to have to put in the same amount of groundwork courting the female whether she is receptive 21 days/month or 30 days/year. As such males are still going to have limited opportunities to mate and will still need to decide which females to pursue and which to ignore. If the females all come into season at the same time as is the case with mot other species then the utility of attractiveness will be increased, not decreased. Males will need to put in 11 months of legwork and will probably only be able to mate with one female after that, so they’re going make damn sure that they are working on the most high value mate.