I finished this really well-written science book by Richard O. Prum, "The Evolution of Beauty". The book, obvious by the title, is about the evolution of beautiful (or costly) traits in organisms. Prum is a professor of ornithology at Yale University, and also head curator of vertebrate zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. So, this man knows what he is talking about.

A lot of the examples provided by Prum are of birds, which make sense since he is an ornithologist. I have a strong background in evolution, although primarily human evolution, and I appreciated how Prum doesn't just jump into using a lot of scientific jargon. This book is very approachable for people that don't possess a lot of biology background. You don't have to have a degree to understand Prum and his approach to explaining evolution.

Prum provides a exceptional argument for mate selection based on choice driving evolution. This is not a new concept; however Prum argues that this concept gets put aside or downplayed over natural selection being the primary driving force of evolutionary change. For example, Prum argues that a lot of the bright plumage and ornamentation in birds exist because of generations of mate choice (mostly female mate choice) picked these costly traits. Now the concept is way more complicated than that, and as with everything in nature there are many exceptions to the rule. Prum does a much better job at explaining than I do.

This really is an interesting read if you have an inclination towards biological sciences and evolution. Also, if you just like birds you may find it a good resource. This book may not be something you just sit down and read in one sitting, but I read through it at a steady pace and took time to absorb what Prum was saying

We all know about Darwin, or at least we think we do. He thought up evolution-- right? Natural selection and the idea of animals evolving to fit their environment was him.

That's how we get the wonderful diversity we see in nature. But is that all of the story?

Nope, it's just half. In going back to Darwin's own writings, Prum discovered that along with natural selection, Darwin proposed sexual selection, or selection because of attractiveness. Largely ignored by mainstream science shortly after Darwin's death,Prum sees this idea as an important one to describe both appearance and behavior in animals. Because birds are his specialty he sees evidence of this in many ways in species from the ducks in the city park to rarely seen South American birds.

This book is a long and sustained argument as to why this idea is true. Therein is both its strengths and weaknesses. When he writes about birds and their behavior the writing is compelling and when he writes about his joy in observing and learning about bird life it's great scientific writing. Unhappily though. because this theory is not popular, the book spends far too much time looking at his critics and at the difficulties he and his students have suffered.

While I'm sympathetic, although I'm not sure I agree with him, the book was far too whiny for me. That attitude and his overly detailed writing in some places made it boring, difficult to read, and dull instead of beautiful.

A common problem for evolutionary theorists is explaining animal traits such as the peacock's tail: it's huge, extravagant, a target to predators, prone to getting caught in branches, and in plenty of other ways seems to be detrimental to the peacock's survival. So why did it evolve? The standard explanation is that it functions as a "costly signal" – that is, the bigger the tail, the more likely the peacock is to have good genes to survive such a handicap, and the more likely female peacocks are to choose it as a mate, since they want those good genes for their offspring.

Prum argues that this explanation doesn't work. He says instead that there's no need to bring natural selection into the picture at all. If a big tail seems "beautiful" to potential mates, that is enough for it to evolve: females will choose big-tailed males so that their sons will also have big-tails, who will then also be preferentially chosen by the next generation of females, and on and on it goes, tails forever getting bigger even if it's actually detrimental to the good of the overall species. Prum calls this "aesthetic selection" or "sexual selection" and argues that it's an important force in understanding evolution. It can function against natural selection, and recognizing the conflict between these two impulses is the only way to understand the diversity of modern biology. Prum is primarily a bird scientist, so the first half of the book consists of examples from his own research, from the amazing tails of Great Argus pheasant, to manakin courtship dances, to the elaborate and colorful structures built by bowerbirds. He even discusses the origin of feathers in dinosaurs, and what colors they might have been! In the final chapters, Prum speculates on how aesthetic selection might also have influenced human evolution regarding everything from our body shape to female orgasms to the existence of same-sex desires.

Overall it's an interesting and insightful argument, and Prum makes his case very well. The one thing I would critique is that I don't think he did a good job of proving that aesthetic preferences are themselves heritable, or how they would originally spread within a population. It's also a book that requires the reader to have a fairly well-informed background in evolutionary theory, which I'm not entirely sure matches the fact that it's being sold as popular science. But maybe I'm underestimating the average person's level of knowledge! At any rate, I'm glad I read it, even if it required more thought than I expected.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1960171725