Female preferences are themselves traits that are selected for. That’s the horse that comes before the cart. If the females of the species decide they like male traits that are unfit, then those females will have fewer or less-successful offspring and the traits (male unfit trait plus female preference trait) will not tend to propogate. So how do we solve the conundrum of the peacock tail, huge antler racks, stotting, etc.? How can we explain the fact that some male sexual traits exist which LESSEN the chance of the male’s surviving? Isn’t it true that a large and ungainly tail makes a peacock easier for predators to spot, and makes it harder for the peacock to get away, and yet it’s still attractive to females? Such traits aren’t advertising the possibility of fit offspring overall. After all, the male offspring will share their father’s handicap. What such traits advertise is the possibility of fit DAUGHTERS. Because this male is so strong, healthy, and fit that he can survive even with this metabolically expensive and ungainly tail, it means his daughters are going to be extremely fit, for they will inherit his overall strength, endurance, and health without the handicap.

What this has to mean is that fit daughters are more important to gene propagation in the long run than fit sons. Otherwise, the female preference for mates with large beautiful tails would die out.

Nobody but I that I’ve ever read seems to understand this fact. If you think about it logically, though, it’s completely obvious. Female preference doesn’t just arise from nowhere. It’s a heritable trait the same as any other, and so natural selection of course must work upon it.

The only reason I can see that other naturalists miss this concept is they are mostly male? Does that make any sense? It doesn’t seem to. But otherwise I can’t explain it.

So the answer is that it’s just not rigorous enough, and it thus remains mythic, so if that’s the case, you’re allowed to ask what the myth attempts to establish, and that is that a core aspect of being human derives solely from the biomechanics of bones.

It isn’t crazy – it’s irrelvent. *wink*

Anyway – I can’t beleive I’m up at 5:30 am posting on BCC. I’ve got a bad history with online discussion – I’ve just been reading some of that history. Wish I’d known about x-no-archive. I get really vicious,- but I haven’t been that person in a long while, and I didn’t mean to start now.

~

I’ll take that as a compliment.

I am truly at a loss to understand why the obvious reality of small-brained human babies requiring male-female bonding to ensure their survival is the crazy idea you are suggesting it to be.