(The headline number of this article was first original)
Children very much like to go to the zoo, especially like the pheasant garden in the beautiful peacocks, red-bellied pheasant, parrots, once just in time for the peacock to open the screen, the excitement is really not to mention.
We also often watch documentaries, and the birds in the forest, such as birds of paradise, gardener birds, etc., their exaggerated and beautiful behavior during courtship makes us feel very new.
I have also discussed with children why there are so many different individuals in the process of animal evolution. In particular, the creatures in the jungle and the ocean, whether beautiful or strange, are very different from the animals we usually see. After looking for some information, I didn't figure out why, but it could only be attributed to the evolution of living organisms in the living environment.
It wasn't until I watched "The Evolution of Beauty" that I had a feeling of sudden enlightenment. It turned out that Darwin had also written a book called "The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection", in which he proposed the aesthetic evolutionary theory dominated by the choice of mates, and this force also promoted the process of biological evolution. But mainstream Darwinists saw this as a very dangerous view that would undermine the ability of natural selection to explain everything, so for a long time the theory of aesthetic evolution was suppressed, distorted, misinterpreted, and forgotten.
Among the scientists who attacked Darwin's theory of aesthetic evolution, Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection, was the loudest one. The book also introduces - then historical anecdotes. In 1859, Wallace sent Darwin a manuscript from a forest in Indonesia, and Darwin found that wallace's research had many similarities to the theory of natural selection that he had secretly studied for decades. So Darwin published Wallettus's manuscript and the short articles on his own research, and hastily published On the Origin of Species. Wallace and Darwin never agreed on the choice of spouse, and they fought each other in correspondence and publications, and did not reconcile until Darwin's death in 1882. Under intense attack from the chinese cabbage, the theory of sexual selection remained ostracized and forgotten in bioemechanics, a situation that continued into the 1970s. The story between these two great biologists reminds me of Newton and Leibniz's love-hate relationship with the discovery of calculus, and it seems that the scientific community is not a harmonious mess, and oppression, quarrels, and stumbling are everywhere. Throughout the twentieth century, bioethy was influenced by Wallettus, and Darwin's theories were filtered through Wallettus, diminished and misinterpreted, and the author Plum was indignant about this.
Based on his more than thirty years of fieldwork around the world and his experience of observing various beautiful and rare birds, Yale Professor Prum conducted in-depth research on Darwin's theory of aesthetic evolution of choice, resulting in this "Evolution of Beauty". Through this book, we are able to examine the forgotten pearls in the history of biological evolution, and we can trace another path of biological evolution and re-understand the evolution of various organisms on Earth, including humans.
The Evolution of Beauty is divided into twelve chapters, the first few chapters mainly introduce Darwin's theory and the process of evolution, and then mainly focus on the dazzling birds in the tropical jungle and their courtship and mating behavior. These beautiful, complex show-off courtship shows seem to have nothing to do with survival, but with beauty. Prum believes that these are exquisite traits purely for aesthetic reasons, that is, for the "aesthetic taste of the female", which also provides a basis for the theory of aesthetic evolution. The author of the following chapters also uses his aesthetic theory to explore human sexual characteristics, same-sex behavior, aesthetic outlook on life and the world of biological art, and also puts forward his own views on the process of human civilization. The angle is very unique, and it makes people feel bright after reading it.
Previously, in the BBC's rainforest documentary, the courtship behavior of various very beautiful birds was introduced, which made people look very shocked. However, because it is a film that records popular science, it has not introduced too much theoretical knowledge. In "The Evolution of Beauty", a considerable amount of space is devoted to the courtship process and courtship performance of the big-eyed pheasant, opening up a new world for the reader. The pheasant is one of the most beautiful birds in the world, and Darwin once said that they "have ample evidence that the most extreme beauty may be just a sexual charm and nothing else." "。 And seeing the big-eyed pheasant in the wild is very difficult, and many zoologists have spent years without seeing them with their own eyes. Through very hard work, the zoologist used tents, dug bunkers and other methods, and after a long wait, he was finally able to see the true face of lushan with big eyes. When he was able to see the gorgeous movements of the big-eyed pheasant with his own eyes, he felt like he was going to cry. But it is strange that when the male bird starts a passionate performance there, the female bird does not feel very surprised, very calm. Zoologists believe that the ultimate aesthetic is often caused by the extreme failure rate, which also shows that it is precisely because the female bird has a high vision, it is like an experienced and well-educated connoisseur of aesthetics, it will eliminate a large number of male birds, so calm and objective may be more in line with expectations.
While exploring aesthetic evolution, the author also notes the decline of species due to an aesthetic innovation. In the forests of Ecuador, there is a plum-winged bird whose males make strange sounds that are made by rubbing their wings against each other. The sound emitted by these non-vocal organs is very puzzling from an evolutionary point of view, because all pygmy birds have a perfect call, and it is a very important part of their evolutionary system, why did the plum-winged petite bird evolve a completely new way of sounding alone? And because the feathers sound, other organs have also undergone corresponding changes, from the hollow way of other dwarf birds, the ulna, to the current solid state, the consequence of which is that the flight action of the plum blossom winged bird is relatively clumsy and slow, which brings certain hidden dangers to the survival of the population. This also illustrates from the side that selective evolution due to mate preference will lead to racial degradation due to the cost of evolution.
The book also mentions a piece of Hercules near-bird dragon treasured in the Beijing Museum of Natural History, through the collection of different tiny samples of the near-bird dragon, using an electron microscope to observe and sample melanoids, successfully restored the hexhet near-bird dragon, a feathered dinosaur specimen, very beautiful, from the aesthetic evolution of feathers, but also provides a very important evidence. This specimen has been seen many times when accompanying children to the museum, but it is not expected that there will be so many stories and scientific truths behind a fossil, which really makes people feel the magic of nature.
In addition, it also mentions the courtship of the mallard duck, the courtship pavilion of the gardener bird, the courtship of the male bird and other very interesting phenomena, as a form of expression on the aesthetic evolutionary route, adding a lot of strong evidence to this theory, and for us readers, we have seen a different nature, seen a different species, and our eyes are wide open.
Through "The Evolution of Beauty", we can feel the brilliant and colorful nature to fill a gap in the history of biological evolution, which is of great help for us to fully understand Darwin's theory of evolution from a modern perspective and understand the evolution of organisms from different aspects. A good book that is well worth reading and re-reading.