Chapter 10 --sexual Ornaments and Mate Choice Mate Choice and Sexual Ornaments

Get out of your chair and go look at some animals behaving. I hope that spring is in the air so that you can see animals courting and mating. Look at insects, birds, mammals, or reptiles. Go to the beach and look at the fiddler crabs. So sad if the dead of winter has set in and animals aren’t engaged in mating rituals. Look at fish in an aquarium. Go to a tropical fish store and look at a tank of guppies. If no animals are about, or you just feel like being an armchair behaviorist, reach into your memories. Failing the easy availability of wild animals or leaky memory banks, look at humans. Go to places where people like to see and be seen. When you analyze your observations of mating behaviors, you will find that males tend to strut, while females watch. The basis of this simple observation, leads to a powerful theorem of sexual selection. Females tend to be the choosier sex while males tend to display to females. Why is it that females do the choosing in most animals?