In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Richard Prum about aesthetics, birds, and the evolution of beauty. They provide an overview of sexual selection and the aspects of sexual ornamentation and mate choice. They discuss Fisher’s two-factor model of evolution and use the example of the great Argus pheasant to describe Richard’s idea that beauty happens. They discuss the co-evolution of beauty and how sexual selection is not only about adaptation. They mention the subjective experience of animals and theory of mind. They also discuss aesthetic radiation, phylogeny of birds, and the sound production in the wings of Manakins. They briefly discuss the colorful feathers of dinosaurs, duck sex, and aesthetic remodeling. Richard provides some of his critiques of evolutionary psychology and makes the distinction between beauty happening and pleasure happening.
Richard Prum is an Evolutionary Ornithologist at Yale University. His research interests are avian biology, behavioral evolution, sexual selection, and mate choice. He has been a main contributor to the theropod dinosaur origins of birds and the evolution of avian plumage coloration. He is the Curator of Ornithology and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Previously, he was the Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. He is the author of, The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us, which can be purchased here. You can find his scholarly publications here.
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