To chuck or not to chuck? Túngara frogs & evolutionary responses to the puzzle of natural beauty
What explains the generation of such beautiful natural phenomena as the dances and songs of birds, the iridescent colours of the hummingbird, the twisted horns of the kudu antelope, and the convolutions of mollusk shells? What explains this seeming gratuitousness and variety of beautiful natural...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147878 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | What explains the generation of such beautiful natural
phenomena as the dances and songs of birds, the iridescent colours of the
hummingbird, the twisted horns of the kudu antelope, and the convolutions of
mollusk shells? What explains this seeming gratuitousness and variety of
beautiful natural forms? This is the puzzle of natural beauty. Evolutionary
responses to the puzzle include the Darwin-Prum sexual selection response
and the Wallace-Zahavi honest signaling response. I intend neither to weigh
the respective merits of the Darwin-Prum and Wallace-Zahavi responses nor
to assess the fruitfulness of extending these evolutionary responses to include
both the production and preference of beautiful ornaments in nature and the
human practices of producing and preferring beautiful objects. Rather, my
intention is to critically assess these evolutionary responses to the puzzle of
natural beauty, with a particular focus on the courtship displays of the
túngara frog. |
|---|