by John Galt » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:28 pm
natural selection favors the individual who can survive (to reproduce). sexual selection only favors its ability to reproduce (such as the male praying mantis). it's also for ability to signify hey i'm of your species, so let's f**k. it's part of it, but it's not just survival of the fittest genes. and no, long tail feathers are not the fittest. for example, it's theorized that the irish elk, which had the largest antlers of any deer known, was driven to bigger and bigger antlers through sexual selection, favoring the larger ones, that eventually made them unfit to live, because they were so unwieldly. my point was more generalized that it's okay to talk about problems with the theory, but the fact still is species change over time
Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience. -- Theodore Roosevelt
My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.