The Courtship of AnimalsPycraft, W. P. (William Plane)
Science
The Courtship of Animals
Pycraft, W. P. (William Plane)
Animal behavior; Natural selection
The Birth of Weapons—All Flesh is Grass—Utility and Ornament—The
Fever of Love—The “Challenge” of the Deer—What it means—More about
“Hormones”—“Hummel” Stags—The Age of Deer—The “Courtship” of the
Moose—Types of Antlers—Antlered Females—Fighting Topi—The Lance of
the Oryx in the Lion’s Flanks—Happiness and Hartebeestes—Odoriferous
Suitors—The Bloody Sweat of the Hippopotamus—The Elephant in
Love—Concerning Tusks—Polygamy.
From Apes to Antelopes is a far cry, but contrasts are always helpful.
Antelopes and Deer, Zebras and Elephants, Rhinoceroses and Swine, are
types, taken at random, of that great and important group of animals
known as the “Ungulates,” or “Hoofed” animals. These illustrate in
a very striking manner what is meant by the term “Secondary Sexual
Characters.” They demonstrate no less forcibly what is meant by the
term “Sexual Selection.” They are valuable in this connection, because
of the often formidable weapons, in the shape of horns and tusks, which
so many species have developed during the struggle for mates.
But “Sexual Selection” will not explain their origin, and it is
difficult, in the present state of our knowledge, to discover any
clues which will reveal this. In seeking these there are certain broad
aspects of the problem which are not to be lost sight of. In the first
place, horns, at any rate, are confined to the hoofed animals. That the
various types of hoofed animals, living and extinct, have had a common
ancestry, no one at the present day will probably call in question. The
relationship, however, of the various living types, one to another, is
by no means always apparent: the missing links are to be sought in the
records of the rocks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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