Hong Wei’s comment on The Evolution of Beauty： How do female animals choose the father of their children？
Richard O. Prum, The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal Word-and US（2017）, Doubleday
One day in 2014, in the crowded Disney Wildlife Kingdom, a male megalophus suddenly drew a big circle around a female megalophus, as if to announce to others: "This is my territory and hers, so stay away from idlers." The male pheasant slowly approached the female pheasant, pecked and unfolded its wings, posing like an umbrella overturned by the wind, fully showing off the golden eye-shaped patterns on its feathers. The female pheasant is cold, and the male pheasant is persistent, tirelessly repeating a one-man show containing music, dance and exquisite costumes. About a minute later, the female pheasant fled. The number of views of this short video on Youtube has exceeded 2.6 million so far.
The reason why the male pheasant goes to great lengths to show off is nothing more than one purpose: to attract the opposite sex and pass on the genes to the next generation. Richard O. Prum, a well-known ornithologist and evolutionary biologist, tried to make a scientific explanation for this "beauty" displayed through sexual ostentation. Combining years of scientific research, he published The in 2017. Evolution of BeautyA book. After the book was published, it quickly entered the public eye, and was nominated for the Top Ten Best Books in The New York Times in 2017 and the Pulitzer Prize for Books in 2018.
It should be noted that there are two kinds of translation of the word Evolution in China: "evolution" and "evolution". The former is more common, but I prefer the word "evolution". Evolution itself includes both "evolution" and "degradation". Just translating "evolution" easily gives readers the illusion that biological evolution must be a one-way development of "forward". As for why we use the word "evolution", there is a certain special background, and I have done research on it, so I won’t repeat it here. The author is overseas and can’t buy the Chinese translation in time, so all the contents related to the book quoted in this paper are from the English version, and only chapters and page numbers are marked to avoid redundancy.
"Beauty Happens" Hypothesis
More than a century ago, Darwin, who was famous for his Origin of Species, was always depressed and uneasy when he met male peacocks. "Natural selection, survival of the fittest" is so pale and powerless in front of the breathtaking tail screen. In 1871, he published another masterpiece, The Origin of Man, and put forward the theory of "sexual selection".
Darwin imagined that there were two distinct evolutionary mechanisms working together. One is the law of struggle, which means that individuals of the same sex compete for the opposite sex. This has prompted animals to evolve aggressive organs and develop in a larger direction. The law was widely accepted as soon as it was made public. But the biologist St. George Mivart (1827-1900) thought that it still belonged to "natural selection".
The other is spouse selection, that is, individuals develop in the direction of increasing attractiveness to the opposite sex. This is the evolution of beauty. Animals can have subjective experience like people, and can perceive and evaluate beauty. Darwin sighed: "I must fully admit that it is always surprising that many birds and some mammals’ female animals have enough appreciation ability to appreciate the beauty of decoration. As for the so-called talent, we have reason to think that it is the creation of sexual selection. What is particularly amazing is that this is also the case among reptiles, fish and insects. However, we really know too little about the psychological status of animals below people. "(The Origin of Mankind, Chapter 21, Introduction and Conclusion of the Book, translated by Pan Guangdan and Hu Shouwen, Commercial Press, 1997)However, alfred wallace (1823-1913), a biologist who put forward the theory of natural selection almost at the same time as Darwin, expressed doubts about the possibility of animals using their perception and cognitive abilities to make mate choices. He insists that human beings are a species specially created by God, and they have the cognitive ability that animals lack by virtue of God’s power. In 1930s, biologists redefined "natural selection" and included "sexual selection". The theory of sexual selection has not turned over.
Although the theory of evolution has influenced the whole human society, the proportion of people who believe that human evolution comes from natural selection is not high, only 33% or 40% in the United States. Daniel Dennett, an American philosopher, once put forward in his influential book Darwin’s Dangerous Ideas that natural selection is Darwin’s dangerous ideas, saying that it is an unconscious, mechanical and algorithmic process. The principle of sexual selection is even more neglected by the world. Geoffery Miller, an evolutionary psychologist, pointed out: "At present, students majoring in biology are usually educated in this way. Sexual selection belongs to natural selection, which is very similar to artificial selection … but this is not Darwin’s view. Sexual selection is an independent process." Therefore, Plum believes that sexual selection driven by random aesthetic selection mechanism is Darwin’s real dangerous idea.
In 1930, ronald fisher (1890-1962), a biostatistician, put forward a hypothesis of the genetic mechanism of the evolution of spouse selection, namely, "Fisherian Runaway or Runaway Selection". Richard Dawkins in The Blind Clockmaker(Translated by Daw-hwan Wang, CITIC Publishing House, 2014)The out-of-control mode has been described in great detail. Taking Megalophus megalophus as an example, through the choice of generations of female aesthetic preferences, male Megalophus megalophus became more and more beautiful and decorative, and then female aesthetic preferences became stronger and stronger. That is to say, cognitive preference and the evolution of decorations influence each other and shape each other, which leads to co-evolution. Under the impetus of mate selection, it is entirely possible for biological individuals to evolve useless beauty at will without being dominated by natural selection, sometimes even contrary to natural selection. For example, the male peacock’s tail screen is bright and dazzling, but it is heavy and long, which is not suitable for flying and runs very slowly.
In courtship, the male pheasant spreads its gorgeous wings.
Fisher’s theory has not been widely recognized. In 1970, Amotz Zahavi, an Israeli evolutionary biologist, put forward the "disadvantage principle", which gained a lot of fans. He pointed out that the more complicated the characteristics of sexual ostentation, the greater the cost, the more unfavorable the conditions and the stricter the test, the better the quality of the selected spouse. In other words, females are attracted to males not because of subjective beauty, but because the characteristics of beauty displayed by males send a signal about male ability. In Plum’s view, Zahawi is a typical "accommodator"; Adaptability sits at home; Dawkins was also called by him a staunch Xinhua Laisenist.
With many years’ experience in bird research, Plum put forward the "Beauty Happens" hypothesis on the basis of "Choice Out of Control Theory" and regarded it as a Null model of the origin of natural aesthetic characteristics. Just when I was confused about the philosophical concepts of "Null hypothesis" and "zero model", my friends engaged in biostatistics took pains to explain to me: zero model is a model based on zero hypothesis; One statistical research method is to put forward a hypothesis and then prove it. Plum doesn’t seem to follow this path. He explained: "In the field of science and statistics, this assumption of’ no special mechanism exists’ is considered as a null hypothesis or a null model." (Page 68)Beauty in "beauty occurrence" is something that animals can perceive, and it happens Arbitrary. It doesn’t convey any information, and there is no special mechanism to control this process. Beauty exists only for females to observe and evaluate.(Page 40). Plum compared it to fashion. People’s favorite new shoes will rub their feet, and their favorite clothes may not cover their bodies well. Although the sexual ostentation of animals is beautiful, it is likely to be unfavorable to survival. Animals are slaves to the evolution of fashion.
Plum further explained: "Zero hypothesis is not only a temporary knowledge tool we use to complete scientific work. Sometimes, it is actually an accurate description of reality, that is, there is really’ no special mechanism’ … Zero hypothesis can protect science from crazy guesses and belief-based fantasies. " He thought that the theory of adaptive spouse selection was accepted by everyone because it provided reassuring rationality and logic. Everyone is constantly forming evidence to confirm a fact that has been widely recognized. This is just an empirical procedure based on faith. The function of zero model is to prevent belief-based positivism from replacing science. With this intention, Prum often asks similar questions: Is the evolution of this feature due to its excellent genes or real information directly beneficial to animal survival, or is it only sexually attractive? Only by overthrowing the zero model of "beauty happening" can your scientific research plan continue.(Page 69-74).
"Beauty Occurrence" and Women’s Sexual Autonomy
The courtship scene of pygmy birds is interesting. They fight in groups. In a courtship field, many males jointly defend the territory and cooperate to complete the complex show-off, thus establishing a long-term and highly socialized "Bromance". In recent years, David McDonald found that the best predictor of young male long-tailed jiaojiao’s mating success in the future is its connectivity with male social networks. That is to say, those experienced young males who often participate in the display of different groups are most likely to sit in the leader position in the future and obtain a higher mating success rate. A pygmy bird is a mating bird with many females. Some males may never mate for life, and females may eventually forget each other after mating with males. It can be inferred that female’s preference for mate selection may have a far-reaching impact on male’s social relations, which fundamentally changes the male world they rarely visit and promotes female’s autonomy in sexual choice.(Chapter VII).
Five male swallowtail fliers are showing off their cartwheels to females in a coordinated and cooperative way.
Unlike pygmy birds, female ducks choose their mates in wintering places and spend the long winter sweetly. In spring, they migrate to the breeding ground together. The male duck continued to show off to prevent the female duck from being contaminated by other males. After many shows off, the duck couple finished mating on the water. "Only admire mandarin ducks but not immortals" describes such a romantic picture. In fact, only a few ducks will form a long-term monogamy, such as Canada geese, swans and ugly ducks, which jointly maintain territory, nest and raise young. Most ducks live in a world where there are more males and fewer females, and the females raise their chicks alone. They have no exclusive territory, they nest and live in food-rich places, and their social relations are very complicated.
Most male ducks can’t find a mate, so they either wait until next year or force mating. Why forced mating, not rape? In the field of animal behavior, researchers have always avoided using anthropomorphic words. Susan Susan Brownmiller, an American feminist defender, suggested that in human society, rape and the threat of rape are both mechanisms for social and political oppression of women. However, Plum believes that abandoning the word rape weakens the social and evolutionary impact of sexual violence in animals.(Chapter 5). Among several kinds of ducks, including mallard ducks, the proportion of forced mating is as high as 40%. The male ducks gang up on a female and then gang rape her. The female duck fought hard and was scarred and even killed. The female duck is desperate to resist, just for her offspring to become "beautiful" in her eyes, hold enough sexual attraction, and eventually produce more offspring. This is the indirect genetic benefit of spouse selection, which has driven a lot of aesthetic co-evolution.
More than 95% of birds have no penis, only a hole called cloaca. When mating, the two holes match and the semen flows into the female bird. Even if the male can climb on the female body violently, he can only leave the sperm on the surface of the cloaca. Females can refuse to accept sperm they don’t want. However, ducks have penises, the length of which is comparable to that of the whole body, and the structure is complex like a spiral cone. In a male-female waterfowl, the male penis is short (about one centimeter) without any surface features, and the female vagina structure is also very simple, with no dead end and no spiral shape. Dawkins in The Greatest Show on Earth(translated by Li Hu and Xu Shuangyue, CITIC Publishing House, 2013)The term "arms race" was put forward, pointing out that "there is also an arms race between males and females of the same species" Among those ducks with high incidence of "forced mating", there is an arms race in the history of evolution, and the reproductive organs of both sides are developing in the direction of more and more complicated structure(Page 172-173). Female ducks have evolved physical defense mechanisms to reduce the harm caused by forced mating. Although the probability of forced mating is as high as 40%, only 2% to 5% of ducklings are offspring of forced mating. In other words, the vast majority of forced mating ultimately failed.
The purpose of this co-evolution of sexual confrontation is to fully obtain the right to freedom of sexual choice, not for reproduction. Female birds can control who can be the father of their children. Due to the disappearance of penis, the expanded sexual autonomy gives females an advantage in the sexual conflict with males due to parental investment. Finally, the increase of male reproductive investment promotes the evolution of late chicks.(Page 180-181). In the "arms race" between ducks, males are always fighting, while females are only out of defense, which is an unequal race. Similarly, in human society, feminism is to gain autonomy, not to control men. Plum used this to criticize the views of contemporary anti-feminists. Contemporary anti-feminists often describe men as victims of women’s forced social control, which is very grotesque and distorted.
Humans study animal behavior and hope to spy on themselves. When talking about the great difference between humans and animals, Dawkins attributed it to culture. He believed that culture is basically conservative, which can be replicated by human brain and can also lead to some form of evolution. In the selfish gene(Translated by Lu Yunzhong, Zhang Daiyun and Wang Bing, Jilin People’s Publishing House, 1999)In this book, he created a word that reads like Gene, meme, which is translated into meme or mimetic in Chinese. The proposal of memetics has also triggered a memetic research fever. Undoubtedly, human views on sex and gender are also influenced by culture. Human mate selection takes place in a complex environment, and human beings extend aesthetics to a new dimension, that is, social personality, such as humor, kindness, consideration, honesty, curiosity and self-expression. Compared with women, men’s appearance obviously lacks sexual decoration characteristics. Plum’s point of view is that in the process of human evolution, women focus on social characteristics, not physical characteristics; A man should be a good husband and a good father.(Chapter 8).
The courtship pavilion built by the bowerbirds is of no use except to seduce and display. In the "tree-lined" courtship pavilion built by the big pavilion birds, the width and height of the corridor can only accommodate one female bird. If the male bird wants to attack from behind, the female bird has already escaped from the front. Courtship booths protect female birds from sexual assault. On this basis, Plum put forward Aesthetic Remodeling mechanism, that is, spouse selection based on aesthetics can change or remold males, so that they are not compulsive, destructive and violent. For human beings, aesthetic remolding is a unique process of weaponization. For example, men have no slender and sharp canine teeth, and the size gap between them and women has decreased. Plum even speculated that male homosexual behavior may also be an extension of the aesthetic remolding process. Women’s spouse choice not only affects men’s physical characteristics, but also affects social characteristics and changes the social relations between men. On the contrary, women’s same-sex preference evolved through natural selection of alliance. Since then, the proportion of men who have same-sex sex sex is definitely higher than that of women.(Chapter 11).
In short, in Prum’s eyes, sexual autonomy is not a fictional and flawed legal concept fabricated by feminists and liberals; Sexual autonomy is a feature evolved from the population of many sexually reproducing species.
Plum’s "Alone"
Researchers who have contributed to regular academic journals know very well that whether a paper can be hired depends on anonymous peer review. Even if hired, the paper will be revised according to the evaluation opinions before it can be formally accepted. Plum has gone through this process many times, but a review experience in 1997 has always haunted him. At that time, he contributed to the first-class journal American Naturalist in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology (The American Naturalist）。 The magazine asked Plum to prove how a unique posture of the male diphtheria jiaole evolved through random mate selection. Unable to produce convincing evidence, he finally had to delete the relevant parts.(Page 65-66). In the process of studying duck’s sexual selection, he was attacked by many media. The reason is that Plum Lab’s research on the evolution of duck reproductive system was funded by the American Science Foundation. A senator from Oklahoma published the 2013 Waste List (Wastebook), citing the government’s unnecessary expenditure of $30 billion, Plum Lab ranked 78th with only $385,000 in project funding.(Chapter 5).
Plum criticized the views of many contemporary evolutionists, such as the famous "disadvantage principle". He believes that most of the contents of evolutionary psychology are "Bad science" (not easily confused "pseudoscience"-pseudoscience), and that contemporary psychology has had a far-reaching impact on promoting the use of natural selection to explain all evolutionary processes, which has led to fanatical effects (page 227). In an interview with The New York Times, Plum mentioned his anxiety. After The Evolution of Beauty was published, he was eager to know the reaction of his peers. He said that the other party would either not return or find reasons to refuse. Since then, Bart Kempenaers of Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany was the first to make a sharp comment, pointing out that as early as 1994, Malte Anderson had summed up several hypotheses about the principle of "sexual selection": direct interests of picky individuals, sensory preference, species identification selection, genetic index mechanism and Fisher’s self-reinforcing selection. Moreover, these hypotheses are compatible with each other and can jointly explain the theory of explanatory choice. Finally, Kemp nars mercilessly pointed out: "The Evolution of Beauty is not beautiful."
Is Darwin’s theory of sexual selection really forgotten? Not exactly. Plum thinks that the current evolutionary theories are adaptive and dominated by natural selection. He thinks that most scientists don’t really understand Darwin.(Page 18). The forgetting expressed by Plum is the aesthetic principle of "randomness", that is, animals evolve into what they think is beautiful. This view positions female animals as promoters of species evolution, and raises animals’ taste of beauty to a quite high level. Although Plum gave a certain biological explanation to women’s sexual autonomy, he did not win any privileges among female scientists. In 2018, three female scholars from different universities strongly criticized The Evolution of Beauty. They disagree with the single evolution theory of natural beauty advocated by Plum, think that Plum’s definition of beauty is too narrow, and point out that Fisher’s theory of out-of-control choice is an inappropriate zero model. Plum emphasized that the beauty he studied came more from the experience of non-human animals. But in fact, the big-eyed spotted baby and the pygmy bird are also beautiful in human eyes.
Ferris Jabr, a writer in The New York Times, mentioned that many scientists agree that beauty is not all adaptability. Plum praises "randomness", while other scientists seek cause and effect. Molly Cummings found that water itself guided the evolution of the beauty of fish, and the preference of female crucian carp for male crucian carp with a specific color was related to the wavelength. Female guppies like males with orange patches, which is related to oranges falling into the water. She thinks this is the result of environmental restrictions. Michael J. Ryan pointed out that some behaviors in the mate preference are not random, but closely related to the living environment, anatomy and heredity of animals through the mate selection experiment of the túngara in South America. This belongs to sensory preference, which has been considered as an important part of preference evolution.
Ryan defines sexual selection as follows: "The essence of sexual selection is that those beautiful features that improve the mating success rate of animals will evolve, even if these features hinder survival to some extent, as long as it is not too cumbersome to show off them, as long as the cost they impose on survival does not exceed the benefits they bring for sex." When Jeb asked Plum about his sensory preference, he said that it could not explain the amazing diversity and characteristics of decoration. Plum regards sensory preference as another way to maintain the dominant "adaptation paradigm", which refuses to recognize his theory of aesthetic evolution. Interestingly, neither Plum nor Ryan discussed each other’s work in their recent books.
Please don’t forget that when Plum put forward the hypothesis of "beauty occurrence", he has made a perfect summary: a complete aesthetic theory of spouse selection includes two possibilities: random zero model (beauty occurrence) and adaptive spouse selection model (real response of excellent genes and direct benefits)(Page 75). Or, we should put aside the traditional path of natural history and listen to another voice from the current field of evolutionary research-molecular evolutionary biology.
appendix
Considering that too long English notes hinder reading, some of the cited documents in this paper are listed as follows-
First, the big-eyed and childish courtship dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=3IrlBKv1sE0
2. Regarding the research conducted by the Pew Research Center in the United States on evolution theory, there are 33% and 42% of the data listed in this paper. The difference depends on different questioning methods: https://www.pewforum.org/2019/02/06/the-evolution-of-pew-research-centers-survey-questions-about-the-origins-and-development-of-life-on-earth/
Iii. Comments by Kempners B. (2017) Ornithology from the lake shore. The evolution of advertising. ARDEA 105 (2): 85 – 87
4. Ryan, the author of another book about the evolution of beauty, is also an evolutionary and ecologist. He put forward different views on "sexual selection": Michael J. Ryan, A Taste for the Beautiful: The Evolution of Attraction, Princeton University Press, 2018, p8
V. Interview with The New York Times: Ferris Jabr, How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution, the New York Times Magazine, 2019/01/13, p22-33, p48
6. Book reviews published by three female scientists: Gail L. Patricelli Eileen A. Hebetts Tamra C. Mendelson, Book Review of Prum, R. O. 2018. The evolution of beauty: How Darwin’s forgotten theory of mate choice shapes the animal world—and us (2017), Doubleday, 428 pages, ISBN: 9780385537216(2018), Evolution 73-1: 115–124
7. In The New Yorker, Plum discussed the relationship between the study of duck sexual life and patriarchy: Richard O. Prune, Duck Sex and the Patriarchy, May 17, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/duck-sex-and-the-.
Eight, evolutionary psychologist Miller explained the importance of the theory of "sexual selection" in "Courtship Thinking": Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, Doubleday, 2001, p39