It appears you don’t remember much that you read in this thread. You directly quoted my response to a claim that women with large breasts are more fertile. What you directly quoted was my uncontroversial statement that genteic fitness is not the same as fertility. You chose to
IOW this wasn’t about you. It was about fighting ignornace. A statement was made that ceratinly appears to have no basis in fact or reality. I was clarifying that. If your igniorance on the issue is fough too that willbe all o the good. If its isn’t then it doens;t amtter because It isn’t always about YOU.
Your question was fully answered in my first post. To summarise it for you, your initial suggetsion that physical attractiveness is less important in other animals and that rape is more common in other animals couldnt;bemroe wrong. As result everything flowing from it is wrong. Physical attaction is generally more important for other species and rape is generalymore common amongst humans.
If you have additional question I will be glad to answer them, as I have done do far. But everything isn’t about you.
For animals which have a lot of predators, short lifespans, and limited time to reproduce (insects, frogs, some fish), number of offspring is vital. Only a handful survive to reproductive maturity. Their species’ survival is best served by having as many offspring as possible. A reproductively mature individual is already a winner.
Animals who have one or only a few offspring, or have offspring who need nurturing as they develop, need to have the healthiest kids possible. The ability to choose among possible partners could be a real advantage for them, if they have the luxury of multiple potential partners. I think it’s safe to say that some species respond favorably to visual stimuli. However, the diversity of the animal kingdom is so great that there can’t be one simple explanation that applies to everyone.
It is circular, to a degree, but it also works. Peacocks could develop showy tails even if they had no corelation with general health at all, and they would maintain their showy tails even if the corelation ceased. Suppose you had a freak peahen, who was genetically disposed to prefer short-tailed peacocks. She would choose the shortest-tailed cock she could find, as her mate. Because of their parentage, her male offspring would tend to have shorter than average tails, and since the preference for short-tailed peacocks is rare among the general population of peahens, these offspring will have a harder time finding mates, and so this weird peahen with the short-tail fetish will, on average, have fewer grandchicks. So the mutant gene which caused her to prefer short tails will be suppressed, and the long-tail fanciers will continue to be the norm among peahens. Or, in other words, peacock tails are sexy because they’re sexy.
Not really. It’s technically possible, but so unlikley that it’s practically impossible.
What you’re overlooking is why these traits evolve din the first place. They evolved because the very first hens that favoured long tails had more surving descendants. That wasn’t beause a long tail in itself favours survival, but because a long tail correlates with an ability to find foood or somehting similar.
If long tails ceased to have a correlation to general health they would actually be exclusively detrimental, since those feathers represent an extraordinary waste of protein, not to mention being physically disabling. As a result any hen that favoured shorter tails would actually have more surviving male offspring. While those offsrping may not have as good a chance of finding a mate individually, sheer weight of numbers can rapidly favour them.
We can best see this process at work in the rapid dwarfing of island populations, even of animals where the males phsycialy fight for mates. Here we have a phsyical and measurable attribute linked ot sexual sucess being recuced to second place by simple survival value. So island cattle can shrink even though larger bulls mate far more often because the larger bulls also die far more often.
In excactly the same way if peacocks with larger tails had no health advantage they must die more often than males with shorter tales. In almost all cases the simple numbers game will work against the long tail. This is why sexual traits can become extreme and bizarre and onconvenient, but never become regularly crippling. Once the number of deaths that occur ourtweigh the mating advanatge the trait starts beicng rpaidly selevted agianst. It can only be maintianed so long as it reresents no significant defecrease in health and survivability.
She has a mole on her cheek, a big nose and lips that are slightly askew…therefore I feel that she is attractive. :rolleyes:
We are answering your question. Humans tend to mate with healthy individuals of their own species. We typically find healthy individuals to be sexually attractive; we tend to find sexually attractive individuals to be physically attractive/beautiful; therefore sexually attractive/physically attractive/healthy people tend to find mates more readily. Other animals tend to mate with healthy individuals of their own species. We may infer that they find health individuals to be sexually attractive, as well. They may or may not conceptualize physical attractiveness/beauty (that is irrelevant to the question at hand-they may have no concept of physical beauty, but they are attracted to healthy mates and we humans even find healthy/symmetrical individuals of other species to be more physically attractive that asymmetrical ones). I believe that symmetry is one marker of health/sexual attractiveness in most species (at least all sapient species if not all sentient ones), therefore individuals who possess more symmetry will mate more readily that those with less symmetry. Humans, IMO, seem to differ slightly from other species in that they prefer near perfect symmetry to perfect symmetry – at least that is my hypothesis. No species tends to mate readily with unhealthy/sexually unattractive/physically unattractive/asymmetrical individuals. Most individuals of all species appear to exhibit a high degree of symmetry (perhaps not all right-left symmetry, but symmetry of some sort-i.e. starfish symmetry), therefore I believe that we may conclude that biological evolution has favored symmetry for a long time.
It seems to me that the peacock’s tail is an exception, though, because it could be a real disadvantage. What about traits like the frog’s? Is it possible that this trait no longer provides or indicates any advantage, but is a remnant from when it did?
Also:
I’ve always been suspicious of arguments like these. I understand the problems the tail can cause with mobility, but how important is wasting protein? I would suspect that a peacock population would be much more likely to be controlled through predation than malnutrition.