A Taste for the Beautiful (eBook)

The Evolution of Attraction

Michael J. Ryan (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
224 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-8915-0 (ISBN)

Infos

From one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, the astonishing story of how the female brain drives the evolution of beauty in animals and humansDarwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colors of butterflies and fishes to the songs of birds and frogs. He argued that animals have "e;a taste for the beautiful"e; that drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful. But if Darwin explained why sexual beauty evolved in animals, he struggled to understand how. In A Taste for the Beautiful, Michael Ryan, one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off and transformed our understanding of sexual selection, shedding new light on human behavior in the process.Drawing on cutting-edge work in neuroscience and evolutionary biology, as well as his own important studies of the tiny Tungara frog deep in the jungles of Panama, Ryan explores the key questions: Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful and others not? Do animals have an inherent sexual aesthetic and, if so, where is it rooted? Ryan argues that the answers to these questions lie in the brain-particularly of females, who act as biological puppeteers, spurring the development of beautiful traits in males. This theory of how sexual beauty evolves explains its astonishing diversity and provides new insights about the degree to which our own perception of beauty resembles that of other animals.Vividly written and filled with fascinating stories, A Taste for the Beautiful will change how you think about beauty and attraction.

Autor

Michael J. Ryan is the Clark Hubbs Regents Professor in Zoology at the University of Texas and a Senior Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He is a leading researcher in the fields of sexual selection, mate choice, and animal communication. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Produkt-Details

• Zusatzinfo: 16 color illus. 8 halftones.
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Evolution
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Humanbiologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Zoologie
• Schlagworte: addiction • attractiveness • Behavior • biologist • bowerbird • cognitive science • copulation • Cost–benefit analysis • courtship • Courtship display • Crazy, Stupid, Love • Decoy effect • eating • Embarrassment • estrous cycle • Evolution • Evolutionary Psychology • female • Fertilisation • fertility • foraging • Gamete • Guppy • Habituation • idiosyncrasy • Incentive salience • Indication (medicine) • Inner Ear • insect • Intromittent organ • Irrationality • larva • Lecture • Libido • louse • Mammal • Marc Hauser • mate choice • mate choice copying • mating • mating call • Mating system • Menstrual cycle • Molecule • Mutation • nervous system • Neuroscience • odor • Olfaction • olfactory receptor • Orgasm • orgy • Ornithology • Penis • perception • perfume • Perversion • Phenotype • Pheromone • Philosopher • Pornography • pornography addiction • predation • Predictably Irrational • Prediction • Promiscuity • Psychology • Reese Witherspoon • Reproduction • Reproductive system • result • Robert Trivers • Scientist • Sense • Sensory system • Sex • Sex Education • sex organ • Sex pheromone • Sex Toy • sexual arousal • sexual attraction • sexual desire • Sexual Dimorphism • sexual fetishism • sexual intercourse • Sexual orientation • Sexual partner • Sexual Preference (book) • sexual reproduction • Sexual ritual • Sexual Selection • Sperm • Stimulation • Supernormal stimulus • Swordtail • The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex • The Sexual Brain • Vocal sac • zebra finch
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-8915-4 / 1400889154
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-8915-0 / 9781400889150