乐生活Yesterday, when the plane was late and bored, ornithologist Richard Plum knocked on The Evolution of Beauty. In short, this is a Book (mainly) on how sexual selection in birds promotes or even dominates certain evolutionary processes. In a word:
Face value is justice. Why do you look at beauty? Because it looks good.
Many previous biologists believed that animals were actually looking at something else, such as a potential spouse who was unhealthy, sick or not, and whether they would look after their offspring. But Plum thinks not. Looking at the face itself is an important "zero hypothesis", because many evolutionary situations can only be explained by looking at the face itself.
One particularly challenging view is that birds can fly, even because of the pursuit of beauty. (!)
The hypothesis is based on the evolution of bird feathers.
Previously, it was believed that bird feathers evolved to accommodate flight – flat, dense "fibers" (feather twigs) spread smoothly with a certain radian, providing the aerodynamic principles needed for flight, allowing birds to fly between wings or glide in the air.
But! In recent decades, fossil studies of various species of Archaeopteryx and feathered dinosaurs have found that the colorful featherlike structure evolved before the flight itself. After looking at all kinds of fossils, scientists constructed the evolution process of feathers, from a horny protuberance to a fluffy bifurcation, then evolved more bifurcations on the bifurcation, and spread them into dense patches, and finally arranged them into the present feathers. (Figures 1 and 2)
Then, the aggregation of beautiful pigments occurs in step 3/4, where the pigments are laid densely but do not form a smooth surface. At that time, the dinosaur/bird ancestors were still blind, but they were already very colorful and beautiful. Then the evolution of feathers is entirely in the direction of "more colorful", so scientists believe that the shape of feathers was initially "to provide a more beautiful display platform for all kinds of colors" rather than flying.
Later, in order to fully display color and luster, feathers evolved into smoother asymmetrical shapes (more beautiful when wings opened), which provided important support for flight, and in the time of extinction, climate change, scarcity of food, flying was a huge advantage, equivalent to saving the entire dinosaur/bird species. 。
Well… Although it can’t be said that everything is due to "looking at the face", the author of Evolution of Beauty believes that "looking at the face" exists independently of other factors, and the preference for beauty of certain traits is fixed by reproduction, and then continues to look at the face for generations (unless the preference for looking at the face is subject to other environmental pressures). Offset).
In short… Undertaking my last micro-blog, a face-watching world, is hopeless (:)_
