New Scientist
Image: lightmatter
Was Darwin wrong about the sexual allure of the peacock’s tail? A controversial study has found no evidence for the traditional view – practically enshrined in evolutionary lore – that peahens choose their partners depending on the quality of the peacocks’ tails.
Mariko Takahashi and Toshikazu Hasegawa at the University of Tokyo in Japan studied peacocks and peahens in Izu Cactus Park, Shizuoka, from 1995 to 2001.
They judged tail quality in two ways – first by simply measuring tail length, and secondly by taking photos of each male during the tail-fanning display ritual and counting the number of eyespots. Next they examined whether females chose mates with the best-quality tails.
During the seven years of observation, Takahashi’s team observed 268 successful matings. But surprisingly, they found that females mated with poor-quality peacocks as often as with “flashy”, high-quality males.
They conclude that the peacock’s train is not the object of female sexual preference – contradicting Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Read more on newscientist.com…
