The Evolution of Beauty by Richard O Prum

The Evolution of Beauty by Richard O Prum

A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences-what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"-create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.

"A delicious read, both seductive and mutinous.... Minutely detailed, exquisitely observant, deeply informed, and often tenderly sensual."-New York Times Book Review

In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life- which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature?
Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum-reviving Darwin's own views-thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays- Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons-for the mere pleasure of it-is an independent engine of evolutionary change.
Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time.
The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

RICHARD O.PRUM is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History's Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology. He has worked in the field all around the world and studied theropod dinosaurs in China. In 2010, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780345804570
ISBN 10	0345804570
Title	The Evolution of Beauty
Author	Richard O Prum
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2018-04-03
Number of pages	448
Prizes	Winner of New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year 2017, Short-listed for Pulitzer Prize (Non-Fiction) 2018
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.