DARWIN'S SLEDGEHAMMERS

Natural and sexual selection

I'm in a park in Montevideo just sitting back. All around me the pigeons coo and parrots fly back and forth with twigs. So what about natural and sexual selection? What does it mean anyway? It’s grist for Dirk’s mill. He gets going and I listen to one amazing fact after another.

For the biologically illiterate amongst us, a quick explanation of the concepts: natural selection means surviving until you can produce children and then surviving long enough so that you can produce many children. Sexual selection means finding the best possible partner in order to produce your children. Sometimes these two concepts conflict with each other. As an example, Dirk mentions the peacock.

With his magnificent tail, he wants to impress the females. That works pretty well (sexual selection). But that huge heavy forest of feathers means he can’t fly away from, let’s say, a tiger (natural selection). Dirk suggests that in this case sexual selection has the final word: "The female will think:" Wow, if that guy with a big tail is still able to show off in front of me and apparently survived all those tigers, then he must surely be a powerful guy. Fine qualities to pass on to my children. '"

In fact I prefer an example that applies to us, humans. What makes our species so different from other species is our brains. At one point in history we had to deal with the explosive growth of our brains. That had considerable consequences biologically. One of the consequences was that problems occurred when the female had to deliver her baby. Those little heads were too big.

Natural selection offered a solution: babies were born prematurely. Thus suddenly babies were born relatively helpless compared to other species. Nature was not to be beaten and so the concept of paternity was introduced. Man and woman had to stay together longer to increase the survival chances of their offspring.

Natural selection had yet another joker to play: love, a chemical reaction in the brains. On average love between husband and wife lasts 3 or 4 years. Voilà! Just enough to protect the helpless baby through the most vulnerable years and ensure its survival!

This was just a warming up because Dirk continues like a talking waterfall with his story about sexual selection. So it’s the brains that make humans so unique. Which is why women started evaluating what men can achieve with their brains. Muscle strength and striking colors are actually ingnored initially. (Sorry guys fitness is wasted effort!)

If you ask a woman what she finds attractive in a man and she replies something like "he has a good sense of humor", then she really means that it’s an indicator of the degree of flexibility with which that man is capable of using his brain. Men pay attention: you are (unconsciously) assessed on your mental, cultural, administrative and stage skills. All of this imust be related to the meaning and essence of our existence: reproduction.

Whether we like it or not. We think that we think everything. Not quite so. This is software that’s been programmed in our heads for millions of years and it is these subconscious factors that determine our choices.

My thoughts wander. In front of me I see two pigeons. The bigger one is the male. He shows off. He turns in circles for the female and displays his feathers. The sunlight glistens. I see unusual, brilliant shades of green and purple. What a beautiful bird! The female isn’t impressed and hardly gives the male a second glance.

Dirk pulls me back from my daydream. He tells with fiery enthusiasm about Darwin. Charles Darwin saw in nature that it’s not men who choose a mate but women. The males make themselves as interesting as possible. It is the females who choose and decide.

He was a genius in the consistent application of his own views on society. So he developed his concept of sexual selection. Today there are still many people who believe that Darwin's theories do not apply to us. Let alone in the time in which he lived.

For our convenience we summarize the whole thing. Darwin’s insights delivered sledgehammer blows which still reverberate to this very day.
 1. Man descended from the ape.
 2. Women choose their males.

"Darwin’s sledgehammers." I think they're brilliant!