The dimorphism of birds of paradise is even more marked than in the
preceding cases. Nape citron-yellow, throat green, forehead black, back
in burnt chestnut, the cock's tail has two long plumes, his flanks
two fine tapering feathers of yellow-orange marked in red, which he
can spread branching or draw in at will; the dim female is without
ornament. The sifilet, a bird related to the birds of paradise has,
fixed between eye and ear a pair of fine plumes twice the length of his
body, which float as he walks like white blue-shimmering streamers.
It is a lover's paraphernalia, which the female in consequence does
without, while the male loses his after mating.
The dissemblance of barnyard cock and hen are well enough known to give
everyone a clear idea of dimorphism in birds and to show difference of
characters parallel with difference of form.
The dimorphism of mammals is even less often favourable to the
female than is that of birds. One can cite but the sole example of
the American tapir where the male is smaller than the female.[2] The
contrary is nearly always the case. Sometimes the two sexes have an
identical appearance: cougars, cats, panthers, servals. If there is
a rule, it is difficult to formulate, for side by side with these
felines without sexual dimorphism, the sex of lions and tigers clearly
determines their forms.
Among mammifers there are bizarre resemblances and baroque differences.
The he and she mole, at first sight, appear the same even to their
exterior sexual organs, the female's clitoris is, like the male's
penis, perforated to let the ureter pass through it. But here, as we
shall see later, the morphologic resemblance by no means indicates
similarity of characters; the female mole is excessively female.
There is baroque difference of sexes in the capped seal of Greenland
and Terra Nova. The male can puff out his head-skin into an enormous
helmet. To what purpose? Possibly to scare naïve enemies. True to her
rôle of protégé the female can not throw this bluff, which is used by
Chinese warriors, by certain insects like the mantis and by the cobra
among serpents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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