Birds, Sex and Beauty: The extraordinary implications of Charles Darwin’s strangest idea

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    Birds, Sex and Beauty: The extraordinary implications of Charles Darwin’s strangest idea Author: Format: Hardback First Published: Published By: HarperCollins Publishers
    string(3) "336"
    Pages: 336 Language: English ISBN: 9780008645526 Categories: , , , , , , , ,

    From acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley, a new book that studies the peculiar mating behaviour of birds to better understand the origin of beauty and humanity itself. In all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple transaction. Many treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst and violence. In the case of the Black Grouse, the bird at the center of Matt Ridley’s investigation, the males dance and sing for hours a day, for several exhausting months, in an exhausting and sometimes deadly ritual called a ‘lek’. To prepare for the ordeal, they grow, preen and display fancy, twisted, bold-colored feathers. But why are males the eager sellers and females the discerning buyers? Why do increasingly baroque and bizarre males put themselves at risk of attack by circling hawks and rival birds? And why are these displays considered beautiful by humans at all? While the full answer remains a mystery, Charles Darwin thought the purpose of such displays was to charm females. Though Darwin’s theory was initially dismissed and buried for decades, recent scientific research has proven him right – there is a powerful evolutionary force quite distinct from natural selection: mate choice. Using an early morning ‘lek’ as his starting point, Ridley explores the evolution of bright colors, exotic ornaments and elaborate displays in birds around the world – from the complex building rituals of Bowerbirds in Australia to the bubbling mating call of Curlews in the UK’s declining moorlands. He reopens the history of Darwin’s vexed theory, laying bare a century of disagreement about an idea so powerful, so weird, so wonderful, we may have yet to understand all its implications. Birds, Sex and Beauty is a curious and insightful investigation that seeks to uncover the origin of beauty itself – a path that might hold the key to understanding the human mind.

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    ‘Matt Ridley is one of our finest science writers. Author of The Red Queen, he here revisits the fascinating and controversial topic of sexual selection, this time in a series of penetrating meditations from his hide, as he watches the courtship rituals of grouse, peacocks, snipe, ruffs and others. The book is a treat for bird lovers and evolutionary biologists alike’ Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene ‘Matt Ridley is both an inspiring nature writer and a limpid science explainer, and this book is filled with beauty and insight’ Steven Pinker, author of Rationality and Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University ‘A tour de force! Simply the best account – among a great many – of Darwin’s ground-breaking and far-reaching concept of sexual selection, from its inception to our current understanding inspired by the tale of a black grouse’ Tim Birkhead, author of The Wisdom of Birds ‘In his highly readable book Ridley suggests that if we suppose our own evolution conforms to general patterns found throughout nature, perhaps it has been manifestations of wit, intelligence and mind that have appealed, over the eons, to the females of our own lineage’ Jonathan Kingdon, author of Origin Africa ‘A heady tour through the ideas about sexual selection, but it is more than a summary of the history of thought; it is also a commentary on how we share an appreciation of beauty with much of the natural world, whether that be in colour, movement or song … This book shows that sexual behaviour continues to be a mystery worthy of investigation’ Mary Colwell, author of Curlew Moon ‘Gorgeous and great fun … Readers will be enchanted and enlightened’ Stewart Brand, editor of Whole Earth Catalog ‘A captivating journey into the dazzling world of avian courtship, where feathers, dances and songs reveal the secrets of evolution – and offer a mirror to our own desires and dilemmas’ Steve Stewart-Williams, Professor of Psychology, University of Nottingham Malaysia

    Author Biography

    Matt Ridley's books – including The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist, The Evolution of Everything, How Innovation Works and most recently Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 (with Alina Chan) – have sold over a million copies, been translated into thirty-one languages and won several awards. In the 1980s as an evolutionary biologist, he studied the mating behaviour of birds. He sat in the House of Lords from 2013 to 2021 and has been a columnist for The Times, Telegraph and Wall Street Journal. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Northumberland.