Why do male robins have red breasts? Why are the colorful peacocks masculine? Who let the lions have the mane instead of the lionesses? In animal history, male animals have been much flashier, whereas females fade into the background. However, according to The Independent, this is not always true. The long-held belief was that males in the wild needed to attract their mates with their bright colors and showy ornamentation. However, the same is true for the females – the spottier the barn owl the better; the more colorful the bluethroat, the more birds she attracts.
Why have scientists virtually ignored this interesting fact? That’s the biggest question. Is it because of sexism? Perhaps. Maybe males are more wont to look at males in the wild – the few people who have studied it have been mostly women, but there are not many women in the field as well. Did they just not notice? Unlikely, because Charles Darwin was one of the more prominent figures to notice it.
We’re hopefully on the verge of finding out the correlation between the brightness of some animals and the drabness of others, and hopefully sexism won’t play a part. Keep an eye out for the type of thing that will put male animals to shame – females deserve the spotlight.
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I believe one of the reasons that ornamentation tends to be showier in males while females tend to be more camouflaged is that males are, sorry guys, 1. a bit more expendable in the evolutionary sense (the necessary part for them in procreation is a lot shorter, and males do tend to have shorter lives) and 2. women have a reason to be more selective since they usually only bear the offspring of a single mate at once. (Both of these, I believe, are reasons why polygamy is much more common than polyandry in human societies.)
Of course, the involvement of the male varies by species, as do the threats to the female. In human society, things very from being quite egalitarian to “women and children to the lifeboats first!” to women being heavily veiled and often more isolated. All else being equal, I would expect females to be showier when they feel safer and more subtle when they feel more at risk.
I have read that from a survival standpoint, it’s helpful for the females to be more drab and bland so that they are camouflaged and can therefore keep their offspring safer from predators (since it typically is the ladies taking care of the babies).
The males had to standout so the were more colorful. Totally different from humans.
I am bisexual. And from personal experience, I can tell you that men, on average, tend to be more attractive than women, speaking from an aesthetic sense (how many men do you know need make-up to look pretty?). It is strange, considering humans are more known for prizing the beauty of females. But I guess all of that attention is one of the perks (and pressures!) of being a woman.