Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities — John Shaqi
Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiaritiesFinck, Henry T.
Science
Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities
Finck, Henry T.
Beauty, Personal; Love
(2) _Warning Colours._—In this class, on the other hand, the object is
not to conceal the animal, but to make it conspicuous. Certain species
of gorgeously-coloured butterflies, _e.g._ are never eaten by birds,
spiders, lizards, or monkeys, who eagerly feed on other butterflies.
“The reason simply is that they are not fit to eat, their juices having
a powerful odour and taste that is absolutely disgusting to all these
animals. Now we see the reason of their showy colours and slow flight.
It is good for them to be seen and recognised, for then they are never
molested; but if they did not differ in form and colouring from other
butterflies, or if they flew so quickly that their peculiarities could
not be easily noticed, they would be captured, and though not eaten,
would be maimed or killed.”
Mimicry is the name given to a second and still more marvellous class of
Warning Colours. They belong to defenceless creatures which so closely
resemble other brightly-coloured but nauseous or dangerous animals that
they are mistaken for the latter, and therefore left alone. _E.G._
“Wasps are imitated by moths, and ants by beetles; and even poisonous
snakes are mimicked by harmless snakes, and dangerous hawks by
defenceless cuckoos.”
(3) _Typically_-coloured animals are those species which are brilliantly
coloured in both sexes, “and for whose particular colours we can assign
no function or use.” This group “comprises an immense number of showy
birds, such as Kingfishers, Barbets, Toucans, Lories, Tits, and
Starlings; among insects most of the largest and handsomest
butterflies,” etc. “It is a suggestive fact that all the
brightly-coloured birds mentioned above build in holes or form covered
nests, so that the females do not need that protection during the
breeding season which I believe to be one of the chief causes of the
dull colour of female birds when their partners are gaily coloured.”
(4) _Sexual Colours_, comprising those cases in which the sexes differ,
and with which Darwin’s theory of Sexual Selection is directly
concerned. Through no _direct_ fault of his own, Darwin leaves on his
readers the impression—which has become almost a commonplace of
conversation—that it is the general rule among animals for the males of
each species to be more ornamented than the females. The truth is,
however, that “with the exception of butterflies, the sexes are almost
alike in the great majority of insects. The same is the case in mammals
and reptiles; while the chief departure from the rule occurs in birds,
though even here in very many cases the law of sexual likeness
prevails.”
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