Does being beautiful mean dying sooner? In nature, it can. | Richard Prum | Big Think

Does being beautiful mean dying sooner? In nature, it can.
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The courtship rituals of the Club-winged Manakin leave both the male and the female worse off physically, says evolutionary ornithologist Richard O. Prum. And yet, it's one of the most beautiful mating habits around. Sometimes, evolution by mate choice can work in an opposing direction to natural selection, guided more by beauty than what is practical.
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RICHARD PRUM:
Richard O. Prum is an evolutionary ornithologist with broad interests in avian biology. He is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and the Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. His latest book is The Evolution of Beauty.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Richard Prum: One of the most extraordinary examples of beauty happening in the natural world is the courtship display song of the Club-winged Manakin. The club-winged manakin is a South American bird that sings with its wings. The female club-winged does all the nesting and builds the nest and lays the eggs and takes care of them all on her own, but she chooses among available mates based on the songs they sing. But they sing with their wing feathers in a very special way: by shaking their wing feathers rapidly over their back they create an “electronic” sound that sounds like “Bip! Bip! WAAANG” that rings out of the forest, and yet this is actually produced by the wing feathers rubbing together.
This is interesting because it shows that beauty can be innovative. Birds have been singing songs, vocal songs with their syrinx for something like 80 million years, but this bird has essentially abandoned vocal songs to create music in a whole new way with its wing feathers.
Studies have shown that as we look inside the body of the male club-winged manakin the wing bones have been greatly altered in order to make this sound. What this means is that beauty is not only skin deep: in order to make these beautiful attractive sounds the wing bones have become elaborated and even solid like ivory. This is a big deal because all birds have hollow wing bones: even Velociraptor and T Rex have hollow arm bones, so this is a design that goes back prior to the origin of birds and prior to the origin of flight! But flying birds all maintained hollow wing bones, but somehow or other the male club-winged manakin has abandoned them in order to produce his wing song.
This is interesting because his wing bones are actually made worse at flying by the compromise to be beautiful, in order to make the songs that females love. Then the male has been dragged off that optimal design toward a new design, which functions less well at flying; in other words the male has been made less capable at flight by female choice. That kind of investment or cost COULD be rationalized as another kind of “honesty,” a kind of handicap that indicates how good he is, that he can waste energy to make the wing bones. I wanted to test that idea by exploring what’s going on in female club-winged manakins.
It turns out that female club wings have the same elaborate, thickened, or wider wing bones as the males, yet they will never sing a wing song.
How does that work? Well, it turns out that the wing bones develop in the embryo in the egg before the embryo becomes either male or female. And as a result when the female selects on the males that she likes with the song that she likes, her female offspring will also inherit bizarre wing bones, and yet they won’t be made better by them. They will never profit from them. So in this case of the club-winged manakin, both males and females are made worse off as a result of mate choice. I call this the “evolution of decadence”. It’s an example of how mate choice or evolution by mate choice can work in an entirely opposite or opposing direction to natural selection. I think that’s a case where we are driven to accept the idea that beauty happens.
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[@sebastianelytron8450]

Immortality here I come!

[@lohphat]

I will live FOREVER. Alone...

[@myjciskate4]

Kshitij Uniyal We will be able to reverse aging by 2050

[@zako8424]

Live Long die Young....?

[@lohphat]

Loretta Young?

[@user-hk8cv7ri6j]

@Cj You live in a utopia ?

[@PankajKrPrasad]

When you say to someone that you are beautiful, it's not a compliment, it's a feeling that you express. Because the thing or person that you think is beautiful, to someone else that may seem ugly. You see, "Beauty " is in the eyes of the person who sees it. For someone there is and for someone there isn't. ☺

[@roninpainbringer]

you have a low IQ

[@PankajKrPrasad]

@@roninpainbringer"and you are those low EQ people who judge a book by its cover"✌

[@MrSanford65]

Anything beautiful or rhythmic exists in form only and perishes quickly. I think everything in life exhausts itself into symmetry and beauty

[@savannahwise7058]

I got to this video from chapter 4 of his book The Evolution of Beauty. What an interesting read!

[@stephendean2896]

It makes sense time destroys beauty most of the time or if you prefer entropy destroys beauty

[@sysko5986]

Nature, using beauty, to keep a radical avian bone composition in stock .

[@ShawnRavenfire]

I'm still confused. How would a bird (or any species) evolve an instinct to select a mate based on a characteristic that makes them less adapted for survival?

[@thstroyur]

Because the 'choice' between fit and slightly less fit - which is random, not directed - was made possible due to the bird living in a reasonably forgiving ecosystem

[@savannahwise7058]

Evolution is not always beneficial to the creatures. Perhaps this is not an instict, and more of a conscious choice made.

[@treewalker1070]

That's exactly the point. Sexual selection can go counter to survival.

[@ivanttosuckyourblood]

The Epson printer in the office is making advances at me

[@elfboi523]

Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse.

[@movadoband]

I used to think this way, but then age caught up to me and changed my mind, life is def more fun and beautiful after fifty.

[@Cj129qu]

overcomplicated, evolution is not decided by the superlative genes at survival or growth necessarily, but by the ones that actually manage to mate. these things are similar, but not the same

[@user-rc4bg5nj4u]

Love it mines evolution theory

[@Andres64B]

then I'll be here forever

[@adamstevens5518]

How does beauty happen? How do beautiful animals not get competed out by less beautiful, but more physically fit, animals?

[@doomsday_device]

Because the beautiful bird is actually more physically fit if it can survive despite the handicap. The man says it himself in the vid

[@adamstevens5518]

Hot Stuff that’s what I’m asking though. Why wouldn’t a creature without the handicap out compete it? There are tons of species of bird, and birds in particular travel really well. I’d think that one of the thousands of bird species that performs a similar ecological function, but doesn’t have the messed up wings, would push this one out of the evolutionary timeline. Obviously I’m wrong, this species does exist, I just can’t figure out how/

[@doomsday_device]

Maybe singing a good song is a good marker for overall health and as a result the females can identify a healthier male easier, so what seems to be a handicap at first is actually a byproduct of something beneficial

[@davidvino6018]

Write that title on my grave lol

[@nerodiamante9441]

How do they find this embryonic data out?

[@zackfair4332]

They slaughter the pregnant bird and cut it into little tiny pieces

[@nerodiamante9441]

Zack Fair that's my reason for asking the question, be looked so gleeful talking about it all the while knowing that their pursuit of data isn't pretty like the birds.....smh

[@TheSouthwestBoyz]

That’s not usually true. Many eggs don’t make it to the final stage of development and die of defects. Those are usually the first choice. We can’t just go right to slaughtering animals

[@ScienceByMike]

One example in one type of bird doesn't really reflect the title.

[@bigtone7913]

He's a lover not a fighter.

[@zackfair4332]

..............TENTH...............

[@darth_hylian]

Oh shit ima die 3 years ago

[@seanhl1974]

Fax machine bird

[@williamlouie569]

Except for few surviving species on earth most creatures evolved into extinction.

[@MrSushant3]

370 Ugly 🦆 *VS* 10 Gorgeous 🦃 _Who's gonna win the Death Race ?_ 🤔

[@kayrosis5523]

Well, not like evolution cares about flying any more than singing wings. But I'd imagine the females are picking up on some very subtle details

[@brendarua01]

This is a nice example of an alternative driver to natural selection at work. Thanks! Perhaps we shouldn't say 'natural selection' anymore? Every mechanisms is as "natural" as any other. What is meant is to juxtapose human induced change with all the others.

[@doomsday_device]

If the females are what drives selection it's not natural but sexual selection. Those two can go in different directions sometimes

[@brendarua01]

Good point. And by the same token it would be sexual selection if males were choosing. Small world lol

[@wellthi]

same for human taller women have bigger pelvic bone and can pop babies more easily and adapt to the increasing head size but culture and stereotype made men taller

[@Smt_Glaive]

Well my ex is gonna live forever...

[@universeofopulence]

Hahaha... well said😅😅😅😅

[@riccardofrattali1607]

Orrrrrr.....they will adapt a type of life in which they can still survive flying less.

[@dasanji90]

Got this neegas shook lol

[@zako8424]

62

[@timmy666]

Maybe our species is doing the same thing? Mating via (1) hypergamy (2) collective minded evaluation (3) chameleon behavioral traits Status/$$/Looks, "alpha fux beta bux" , getting pregnant before you hit the wall when your sexual market value plummets, and riding the cock carousel as much as possible until that point. Stacking up mileage to where the best of your species who are attuned with time and morality will not want to mate at all. Mating in the age of decadence. Maybe humans are losing their 'hollow wings' , and the psychopathic weirdos with money whom get glorified by the current culture end up mating instead, and they have no problem pumping/dumping & marrying high mileage.

[@samuraijackoff5354]

Uh uh uh

[@BumbleBeeBeeRock]

Ask God. He has ALL the answers.

[@annm4833]

I guess I better get comfortable. Looks like I'll be here for a while. Crap. 🤦

[@TranscendingPolygons]

I will die tomorrow! Sigh.

[@Pinky-fe6vl]

third

[@krishnamohan2351]

So this new research suggests Trump is going to be the first person to live upto 1000 years?

[@annm4833]

Krishna Mohan On Space Force 🚀

[@etxeberre1]

So the point moral of the story is?... maybe? Is this catered to vain people? I thought this was thinktank

[@SuperAdamadam2]

First

[@user-hk8cv7ri6j]

So what you got for coming first. 😜

[@florin793]

Kshitij Uniyal Your attencion

[@holdtehmayo]

So I’ll live forever then 🤔 Shit.

[@johnpatrickabergos2264]

I feel you

[@rhijulbec1]

I know men who think that a different kind of bone(r) sent over the internet is a mating ritual. They look like turkey gizzards~so no. Just no. Jenn 💖 in Canada 🍁

[@annm4833]

rhijulbec1 😂😂😂

[@thstroyur]

Third vid in a row (most likely clipped from a single interview, but still), and it just confirms my impression this guy has the data, but doesn't know how to interpretate it, or at least how to explain it to the general public. So sexual selection is different from natural selection, eh - so much it can even run counter to it? Yeah, I don't think so...

[@aditbhiday]

Let me get this straight: You take an example of one species of birds and then apply that pattern to all of nature. The title seems to be totally misleading.

[@lainsandstrom]

Interesting video; wholly irrelevant title