After publishing On the Origin of Species, Darwin was worried. His theory of natural selection, he realized, couldn't explain why the males of some species have evolved such preposterous ornaments or why others have elaborate armory. He needed another idea. And so the theory of sexual selection was born. Males have weapons, Darwin proposed, to fight over females, and their bright colors, fancy songs and adornments were to seduce the reticent sex into mating. Here, Vernimmen examines why it has taken more than a century to work out that females can be just as competitive and aggressive as males about reproduction.
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