For our group tutorial this week, we each had to present and discuss something we had recently read. I chose the first chapter (“Come up and see my bower”) in a book that had been recommended in my reading group (not the naughty one), called “Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science and Evolution” by David Rothenberg.
The chapter concerns satin bowerbirds and their complex courtship behaviour, which, for a male satin, appears to be as much about demonstrating their artistic ability, as it does their mating suitability and prowess. Their time-consuming and elaborate display is as fascinating as it is complex and poses intriguing questions of the role of beauty and aesthetic-selection in evolution.
I’ll have to read the rest of the book to judge whether Rothenberg successfully argues for his hypothesis that life did indeed evolve to be beautiful for the sake of being beautiful, however, my instincts and the courtship of the satin bowerbird tells me that he does.
It is interesting to note, that as fascinating and profound as their courtship is, in their home territory (north-eastern Australia), satin bowerbirds are considered by many to be a pest. Still, the birds were there long before humans, especially those of the manicured-lawn variety (which satin bowerbirds routinely destroy) – like 50 million years before – and will likely be there long after, unless we kill them off in the process of killing ourselves, or maybe take a few with us when we colonise other planets (we really should because they are amazing).
Anyway, I loved learning about the satin bowerbirds so much that I made a video about them for the online magazine I make a weekly video for.
Here is is:
bexODESSA 