Frustrated, masturbating motherfucks and genetically successful libertines alike will tell you (if not necessarily in so many words) that one of the most important factors in human mate selection is physical attractiveness, which (for selectors) implies healthiness and the ability to pass on the selector’s genes to create large numbers of virile/fertile humans. However, your typical introductory college biology class (when discussing non-human animal species) is much more focused on traits that actually make an animal strong and healthy as key to sexual reproduction (or asexual, really, now that I think about it).
Anyway, my question is this: How important is outward attractiveness in sexually-reproducing animal species other than ours? That is, do a significant number of healthy but unattractive organisms fail to reproduce; or is animal sexuality generally so non-consensual in nature heh that the issue of attractiveness for mating is moot?
Traits that make an animal strong and healthy tend to make it beautiful. For example, peacocks with long, bright tails tend to be healthier than those with ugly, miscolored short ones.
Physical attractiveness is generally of more importance to other animals, not less. Humans are capable of making judgements about the viability of a partner based on a whole range of other factors such as known genealogy, past behaviour, medical history, resources and so forth. We don’t; need to be solely focussed on physical attractiveness.
In contrast for the vast majority of animals those things are unknown and unknowable. The only way that an animal can select a mate is based on how attractive they appear. That attraction can come in many forms, from the ability blow a massive bubble of mucous membrane out of your nose to the ability to fight off rivals to sheer size. But it is all still purely physical.
And that physical sexual attraction of course is what leads to such ridiculous traits as an ability to blow your throat out your nostrils. They serve no purpose whatsoever beyond being attractive to the opposite sex, and they are only attractive to the opposite sex because they demonstrate the animal is healthy enough to waste time and resources doing dangerous and stupid things. It’s sexual attraction in its truest form, and every bit as ridiculous as the human male finding distended fatty swelling on the thorax to be attractive rather than a deformity.
If your college level classes focussed purely on traits that actually make an animal strong and healthy as key to sexual reproduction then your were short changed. Any college or even high school level textbook will give several examples of sexually selected traits, and examine the issue in some depth. That your professors and tutors failed to address the issue was very remiss.
Do a significant number of healthy but unattractive organisms fail to reproduce? It’s almost a meaningless question. As you point out, sexually attractive traits imply healthiness, so it’s actually fairly hard for an animal to be healthy and not be attractive. There has been quite a bit of work done deliberately making animals unattractive, such as pulling out the tail feather of peacocks, or painting the fluorescent patches of birds to make them dull. The experiments all showed the same results: that given any choice potential partners will avoid such ‘healthy but unattractive’ individuals and go for something more attractive. So to that extent I think we can say that ‘healthy but unattractive organisms’, to the extent that they can exist, do fail to reproduce to a highly significant degree. They would tend to reproduce only if all the competition were even less attractive, and since attractiveness sis a comparative thing I guess that would mean they weren’t unattractive anyway.
Is animal sexuality generally so non-consensual in nature that the issue of attractiveness for mating is moot? Absolutely not. Non consensual sex is pretty rare in the animal world. It does occur, notably amongst birds, bats and pinnipeds, all of which lack limbs for fending off such attacks. Amongst most other animals rape would be at best futile (the female simply won’t stand still and can’t be pinned) and at worst futile (a dog that tried to rape a bitch would very likely literally have his penis bitten off before he accomplished anything at all.) As a result sexual attraction is of paramount importance for most animals as the only way to get the opportunity to mate.
Health and beauty are tied into one another. Symmetry is an important aspect of human beauty – the more symmetrical a face, the more beautiful. It’s a physical cue, telling potential mates, “look at me, I’m symmetrical, I’m healthy, you should make babies with me.” Malformed faces, with off-center features, tell you that something went wrong with this person’s development, they become an undesirable mate. Clear, unblemished skin indicates a strong immune system. The enlarged breasts and long legs of women are indicators of fertility. Ever notice the whites of someone’s eyes? The more blindingly white, the more attractive, since it’s a sign of health. Yellowed eyes are unhealthy, hence unattractive.
Other animals are looking for features that signal to them that a mate is desirable and healthy. Maybe we can’t pick up on it, because we’re not hardwired to find a peacock’s tail sexy, but a peahen can.
If you count girls who have not reached puberty yet, yes. Typically a woman begins to grow breasts and legs become proportionally longer at puberty – IE when she becomes fertile.
In a world without C-sections, epesiotomies (sp?), etc, women with the right hips would tend to survive to have more children. Those right hips would tend to become more attractive to a species as time goes on because the majority of children would have had fathers who were attracted to those hips in the first place.
I am not sure how breasts fit in there, not every sexually selective trait has to have a physical purpose. Small breasted, short legged women can be just as fertile, but if the majority of son’s fathers tended to prefer large breasts the sons will tend to as well. I don’t know how much of the differences in looks between the average Asian and Caucasian is based on selective sexual pressure or geological separation and environmental pressures, (the average Asian women tends to have smaller breasts and shorter legs and they are still getting it on) but there are some rather significant differences in looks and none that would have anything to do with fertility.
As far as peacocks go, the big tails don’t indicate good health directly. What they do show is that a peacock who can expend that much effort on a tail has to be really strong to fight off infection and parasites and have the big tail.
As far as humans are concerned, the evidence doesn’t support the importance of attractiveness. Look at some people who have lots of kids; are they really more attractive (by most people’s standards) than people with fewer (or no) kids? Not from what I’ve seen.
Modern medicine, birth control, and food supply have twisted things with humans. Now (in modern countrys) most are capable of reproducing. Through the majority of our evolution there was no modern medicine and food/proper nutrition where often scarce.
In addition males have almost unlimited chances to pass on their genes and in many cases evolution has steered them to the point where any chance to pass on their genes is better than none.
A mans first choice may be Pam Anderson but he will settle for a much less attractive woman. When a dog humps your leg he’s probably not going to get it pregnant, but he has nothing to loose by trying.
It seems all these posts are referring to visual attractiveness, but many animals have poor vision and process information by hearing or smell. Can we legitimately assume that some individuals are using more attractive pheromones or a better voice?
There’s also the matter that human standards of attractiveness are largely passed on culturally, rather than genetically. Hence, our standards can change very quickly, faster than evolution can keep up. Too short a time passed between Ruben and Twiggy for evolution to have any significant effect on typical female weight, for instance. On the other hand, a peahen’s preference for big, showy tails is genetic, and so has persisted for ages, long enough that all peacocks now have big tails.
Indeed, symmetry can be viewed as a marker of health and it appears to be an attractor for many life forms, including humans. However, I believe a good case can be made that humans don’t necessarily consider perfect symmetry to be the most attractive/beautiful quality. A slight aberration on an otherwise symmetrical morphology appears to be the pinnacle of human attractiveness. Examples: birthmark on cheek (i.e. Cindy Crawford), modestly out-of-proportion nose, slightly askew lips (who doesn’t find Sylvester Stallone attractive? ). Humans: Broken symmetry= beauty - but I’m not sure why this would be so. Perhaps we associate broken symmetry with a degree of vulnerability, thus eliciting our nurturing instinct. I hypothesize that attractiveness to broken symmetry may be a purely human quality. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it supercedes cultural boundaries and lurks in the deep recesses of our species’ psyche. What saith thou?
Would you care to quote what Morris has to say on the subject, because I can not recall him saying anything to that effect.
Girls who have not reached puberty are not women, they are girls. IOW reasts are not a sign of fertility amongst women, they are simply a secondary sexual trait. It’s totally circular to point out that a secondary sexual trait is considered attractive as though that somehow explains why it is attractive.
I can’t argue with that, since I was the first person to make that comment in this thread.
But it’s not really what is being discussed. There’s plenty of reason to believe that that peacocks with shabbier tails are regarded as less attractive than others. That doesn’t justify a claim that long bright tails are signs of fertility. I know of no evidence to support such a conclusion.
Breasts and tails are presumably signs of genetic fitness, but that is not in any way the same as fertility.
People who have lots of kids are generally older than people who have no kids (not a rule by far, of course!). Older people don’t look as good. Older people who have kids don’t need to look good, because they already have a mate and have already passed on their genes.
Anyway, the OP wasn’t addressing the importance of attractiveness in human sexual reproduction, which IMO is a topic for a whole 'nother thread entirely.
More importantly, Doctor, how do you feel about your mother?
Seriously, though, I would like to ask those wishing to discuss human reproduction to please start a thread about it.
Isn’t genetic fitness almost as important as fertility? Certainly most sexually reproductive animals (humans included) want lots of healthy kids who will themselves live to pass on the family genes–I would think. But I don’t know much about this from a scientific point of view. Is just having a lot of kids enough for most sexually reproductive animals, or is having lots of healthy kids more important?
It’s arguably more important. But it still isn’t fertility. They are two largely separate issues. It’s perfectly possiblefor a genetically limbless, mute, retarded dwarf to have a higher fertility than anyone else on the planet. That doesn’t mean that being a limbless, mute, retarded dwarf is a genetic advantage.
I don’t recall arguing that genetic fitness is equivalent to fertility, or that fertility makes a limbless etc. creature attractive for sexual reproduction. The question in the OP was about unattractive yet genetically fit creatures.
). Humans: Broken symmetry= beauty - but I’m not sure why this would be so. Perhaps we associate broken symmetry with a degree of vulnerability, thus eliciting our nurturing instinct. I hypothesize that attractiveness to broken symmetry may be a purely human quality. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it supercedes cultural boundaries and lurks in the deep recesses of our species’ psyche. What saith thou?