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Quote by: dilligras  One might contend also that the influences on exactly which traits are ultimately passed on may have a socialogical aspect in the case of humans and other social animals.
Some of the things that females find attractive are entirely arbitrarily selected, due to the kind of peer pressure that sets trends, and determines in large part what they deem valuable. |
Such considerations are so fundamentally a part of Darwinian selection that many evolutionary biologists don't discuss it as a separate mechanism. They talk about 'selection,' meaning both natural selection, i.e., the action of the environment on genetic characteristics, and sexual selection, i.e., the preference for certain characteristics by the opposite sex. Ernst Mayr was one such evolutionary biologist.
An obvious example (and therefore an often used example) is the beautiful tail of the peacock. That tail is not a survival advantage since it severely limits the ability of the peacock to fly. It is, however, very attractive to peahens. It has even been shown experimentally the larger and more elaborate tails are overwhelmingly preferred by peahens.
So here we have a characteristic that is actually a survival disadvantage that is a great advantage to reproduction. Thus, peacocks with large, elaborate tails tend to produce more offspring, which tends to produce more peacocks with large, elaborate tails and peahens that prefer mates with large, elaborate tails. It seems that in the wild, the disadvantage or the large tail is more than offset by the differential reproductive advantage it offers. While large tailed peacocks may survive to reproduce in fewer numbers than the less well endowed (tail wise, I mean), enough of them survive and are so overwhelmingly successful at attracting peahens that the characteristic continues to be passed to the next generation.
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Quote by: dilligras For example, one could take the obvious example of nerds. Many are of above average intelligence, an attribute that would intuitlvely be valuable to the species and a highly desireable trait for ones offspring. And yet these folks are often ridiculed and demeaned by more average folks, who decide as a collective that Rock Hudson looks are emminently more important, even if behind those looks is a Mongo intellect.
As Arthur C. Clarke once observed, "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value." |
True. But for most of our past, the physically strong probably had a survival advantage, and it probably made sense to choose such men for mates since they could provide for offspring better.