(Primarily) Choice
Mods – I believe I’ve quoted less than ¼ of the article here. Plus, there is no copyright notice on the page in question – hoping that’s okay.
Manda JO, thanks for piping up and for the article. I’m sure it was your post that led me here and the article certainly helps in shaping a context, something I was floundering over. Lots of interesting stuff there!
From that article (by Jared Diamond – seems a nice, clean boy. Credentials. However, probably worth remembering it was written in 1996) we have:
Fisher’s runaway selection model theory
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…all female animals, including humans, do best to mate with males bearing good genes to pass on to their offspring; however, females have no direct way to assess the quality of a male’s genes. But suppose that a female somehow became genetically programmed to be sexually attracted to males with a certain structure that gives those males some advantage at surviving–a slightly longer tail, say, that made the male a better flier. Males with the preferred tail would thereby gain an additional advantage, because they would now transmit their genes to more offspring. Females preferring males with the longer tail would in turn gain an advantage because they would transmit the genes for that elongated structure to their sons, who would in turn survive better and also be chosen by females with such a preference.
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Amotz Zahavi’s handicap theory of honest signals
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emphasizes the fact that many structures functioning as body sexual signals are so big or conspicuous that they must indeed constitute a hazard to their owner. For instance, a huge tail not only doesn’t help a bird survive but actually makes life more difficult by making it hard to slip through dense vegetation, take flight, and escape predators. Many sexual signals, Zahavi notes, like a bowerbird’s golden crest, are big, bright, conspicuous structures that tend to attract a predator’s attention. In addition, such structures cost a lot of biosynthetic energy just to grow. As a result, he argues, any male that manages to survive despite such a handicap is, in effect, boasting to females that he must have terrific genes in other respects. When a female sees a male with that handicap, she is guaranteed that he is not cheating by carrying the gene for a big tail and being otherwise inferior. He would not have been able to afford to make the structure, and would not still be alive, unless he was truly superior.
One can think of many human behaviors that surely conform to Zahavi’s handicap theory of honest signals. Any man can tell a woman that he is rich and that therefore she should go to bed with him in the hope of enticing him into marriage–but he might be lying. Only when she sees him throwing away money on useless expensive jewelry and sports cars can she believe his claims of wealth.
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Astrid Kodric-Brown and James Brown truth in advertising theory
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Like Zahavi, and unlike Fisher, the Browns emphasize that costly body structures surely represent honest advertisements of quality because an inferior animal could not afford the cost. But while Zahavi sees the costly structures as a handicap to survival, in the Browns’ model they favor survival. The costly structure is thus a doubly honest ad: only a superior animal can afford its cost, and it makes the animal even more superior.
For instance, the antlers of male deer represent a big investment of calcium, phosphate, and calories, yet they are grown and discarded each year. Only the best-nourished males, those that are mature, socially dominant, and free of parasites, can afford that investment. Hence a female deer can regard big antlers as an honest ad for male quality, just as a woman whose boyfriend buys and discards a Porsche each year can believe his claim of being wealthy. But antlers carry a second message not shared with sports cars. Whereas a Porsche does not generate more wealth, big antlers bring their owner access to the best pastures by enabling him to defeat rival males and fight off predators.
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In that extensive article, Jared Diamond develops ideas about physical body signals like hair, face, muscles, female body fat, etfc., (and offers counter arguments) before finally arriving at the penis:
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Penis evolution evidently illustrates the operation of runaway selection, just as Fisher postulated. Starting from a 1-inch ancestral ape penis similar to the penis of a modern gorilla, the human penis increased in length by a runaway process, conveying an advantage to its owner as a signal of virility, until its length became limited by counterselection as difficulties with its fit to women’s vaginas became imminent.
<snip…ouch!>
Zoologists studying animals regularly discover that sexual ornaments serve a dual function: to attract mates of the opposite sex and to establish dominance over rivals of the same sex. In that respect, as in many others, we humans still carry the legacy of hundreds of millions of years of vertebrate evolution engraved deeply into our sexuality. Over that legacy, our art, language, and culture have added only a recent veneer.
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If I read all of that correctly, Jared Diamond is arguing (in 1996) that, indeed, “Male characteristics are a function of female choice” and that human females did get it wrong – at least in terms of their preference for size over sperm count.
Where they got it right was that later generations of women would also make the same false choice, thus ensuring survival of their genes. A self-fulfilling falsehood ?
Reasonable ? - Anything more recent ?
– but I digress).