The Argus Pheasant is a lifelong bachelor. He mates with multiple females but has no further contact with his mates or the baby pheasants he sires. By human terms, not much of a feminist.

Yet, he stages a chivalrous courtship on moonlit nights on a forest stage he clears with meticulous care. He sings and dances and pecks. He encompasses his 'date' in a cape of intricately-colored four-foot-long feathers. He ends with a bow.  

Evolutionarily, there's no purpose for the spectacular feathers on the Argus Pheasant - unless you consider they may have of-beauty-richard-prum-darwin-sexual-selection.html?_r=0">evolved to satisfy the sexual preferences of the female Argus.

Darwin, while famous for his theory on evolution through battle for the fittest, also promoted a second, less popular theory of evolution through female sexual preference. 

This theory may also shed light on evolved human traits and behaviors we don't need to survive - like female orgasm and same-sex preferences. 

GUESTS:

• Richard Prum - Evolutionary Ornithologist, Professor of Ornithology at Yale and the curator of Ornithology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He’s the author of The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us. 
• Patricia Brennan - Evolutionary Biologist, Behavioral Ecologist and visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke College.

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