The Evolution of Beauty
How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us
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Narrated by:
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Dan Woren
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By:
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Richard O. Prum
About this listen
A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences - what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful" - create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.
In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature?
Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum - reviving Darwin's own views - thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: club-winged manakins who sing with their wings, great argus pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3-D spheres, red-capped manakins who moonwalk. In 30 years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection, in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons - for the mere pleasure of it - is an independent engine of evolutionary change.
Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time.
The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.
©2017 Richard O. Prum (P)2017 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Sex, Time, and Power offers a tantalizing answer to an age-old question: Why did big-brained Homo sapiens suddenly emerge some 150,000 years ago? The key, according to Shlain, is female sexuality. Drawing on an awesome breadth of research, he shows how, long ago, the narrowness of the newly bipedal human female's pelvis and the increasing size of infants' heads precipitated a crisis for the species. Natural selection allowed for reconfiguration of hormonal cycles, entraining women with the periodicity of the moon - and imbuing women with the concept of time.
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Interesting conjecture
- By DJKPP on 10-15-20
By: Leonard Shlain
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I, Mammal
- By: Liam Drew
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A list of the attributes that define a mammal is a ragbag of things - fur, live birth, three bones in the middle ear, a brain whose two halves are robustly joined together.... But this curious collection of features contain the roots of all the biology that makes us what we are: monkeys with massive brains who parent extensively, enjoy sport and think lots. Which is to say, what makes us mammals makes us human.
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Who knew?
- By Fitmen on 04-25-18
By: Liam Drew
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Before the Dawn
- Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings, driven by revelations discovered in the human genome, has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors, the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization.
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Amazing information
- By Albert on 06-15-07
By: Nicholas Wade
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Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
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Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters
- By: Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, our brains and bodies are hardwired to carry out an evolutionary mission that determines much of what we do, from life plans to everyday decisions. With an accessible tone and a healthy disregard for political correctness, this lively and eminently readable book popularizes the latest research in a cutting-edge field of study: one that turns much of what we thought we knew about human nature upside-down.
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Not bad but didn't live up to the reviews
- By Ana Mohammed on 01-08-12
By: Alan S. Miller, and others
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Wild Justice
- The Moral Lives of Animals
- By: Marc Bekoff, Jessica Pierce
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male?
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What Some Of Us Have Always Known...
- By Douglas on 12-12-13
By: Marc Bekoff, and others
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Masters of the Planet
- The Search for Our Human Origins
- By: Ian Tattersall
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty thousand years ago - merely a blip in evolutionary time - our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special.
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Great Book, Some Sloppy Editing
- By DB on 11-23-20
By: Ian Tattersall
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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A Troublesome Inheritance
- Genes, Race, and Human History
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes.
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This is NOT Racism!...
- By Douglas on 06-01-14
By: Nicholas Wade
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The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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Challenging textbook more than an enjoyable listen
- By Eric on 01-15-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Science of Good and Evil
- Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
- By: Michael Shermer
- Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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In The Science of Good and Evil, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates into moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans.
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Read by author
- By Gregory A. Townsend on 04-16-23
By: Michael Shermer
What listeners say about The Evolution of Beauty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joel Smallwood
- 03-11-19
Interesting ideas. A little oversold.
This book is definitely worth a listen.
A quick technical note. The narrator was great. I kind of wish they added actual bird calls. The narrator did an admirable job mimicking them. It makes sense in an audiobook that they could play actual recordings.
Regarding the content.
All in all, I agree with the author. I think Evolutionists can often overlook anything other than Natural Selection as a force for evolution. And I think that his theory of aesthetic selection is reasonable. Of course, most evolutionary biologists would agree, but they do tend to minimize.
That being said, I absolutely don't think the aesthetic selection should be the null hypothesis, which he argues for, and I don't like when he turns to conspiracies and cultural biases as to why it isn't more widely accepted.
Still a good book that is worth listening to.
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- kaf
- 07-18-18
Explains a lot about evolution I wondered about
The first few chapters were a delight to listen to. The later ones were more dense and harder to concentrate on as I drove, I think partly because of the topic, development of human sexual parts. I have a really prim side sometimes. The birds were definitely easier, and totally fascinating.
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- BB
- 01-21-18
Making Sense of Art and Sex
If you are a person who has been fascinated by Darwin’s Theory of Evolution then this is a must read.
In fact, Darwin had two major theories, one of which has been subsumed because it does not fit the “modern” construct of dominant males and passive females that undergirds so much of our cultural experience in America and worldwide. Professor Prum’s radical approach to include both of Darwin’s major theories as an explanation for evolution including the sexual autonomy of both sexes in sexual selection as influenced by an expansive definition of beauty is compelling. The set up is in the whole first section of the book as explained through adaptation by one of the most ancient species on earth - birds. I’m not a birder, but I was riveted all through the section. The second portion of the book applies scientist’s (ornithologist ‘s) research to the contemporary human experience as regards sexual choice of women, men and the full spectrum of the LGBT communities and the relationship of beauty and art in this process - a central postulate of Darwin’s original work. Fascinating and profound.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-12-24
Bold and Thought-Provoking
Characteristically Prum - challenging paradigms and perched precariously on the edge of what we think we know. An invigorating exploration of the evolutionary forces that may have brought beauty into the world, often against the intuitive will of natural selection.
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- tetrahymena
- 09-08-18
Sexual Selection in an Old Light
Evolution of Beauty looks at the theory of Sexual Selection from the idea proposed by Darwin to our current day synthesis of ideas. The book argues for re-elevating this mechanism to the prominence that it deserves. However, I would argue that among many who have studied evolution, it has held such a position for many years. That said, the book helps remind people that natural selection may lay at the base of the modern family of theories about evolution, but this theory, itself, has many clades.
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- Mel Tzu
- 11-02-19
Profound, and surprisingly feminist!
Besides the fascinating stories of mate choice, plumage evolution and mating rituals this book is revolutionary in its conclusions. Reviving Darwin’s more subtle and overlooked theories of evolution, and building on them with exhaustive research today the author leads us in a deep dive into our human culture. This book holds the seeds to heal our culture .
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- jeri jones
- 08-23-18
This book has something to teach us all!
I’m no scientist but if you can stick with it, this book will give you powerful insight into how female preferences in mate choice (by mainly examining the most ornamental animals on our planet — birds, along with humans) have influenced the planet’s aesthetic evolution and beauty. I’m thoroughly convinced now that God is indeed a woman! Great book!
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- A. McNeely
- 12-18-20
Good ornithology, speculative and political anthropology
After an engaging start this book settles into a nice cantering pace. It’s a nice ride viewing the interactive of Darwin and Wallace over “sexual selection” and the role of aesthetics, if there is any, in evolution. The dressage performance is decent, respectable, and for some reason begins to have a performance of name-dropping. Annoying as that show of intellectual snobbery may be, the ride keeps apace in a jaunty manner as the celebrity is just a blip in the narrative. That is until the politics and anthropology get started. Who gives a rat’s ass that a study of duck penis was paid for with Federal recovery funds? That would be the guy who was on the receiving end of the money when the study made national news, aka the author of this book. Who knew that ornithology was the place to really understand the evolution of humanity? That same guy. The book is a third longer than it ought to be with no discernible insight into the role of aesthetics because of the pseudoscientific blathering supposedly about anthropology and human evolution. As for the performance, the narrator does an excellent job. Sadly, though the narrator performs various bird songs as written in the text of the book he was not provided an opportunity for either a turkey or duck call.
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- Robert
- 07-20-20
Creative view of evolution.
There are many animal behaviorists who have serious problems with this book, but I loved it. Prum presents a creative view of how evolution has generated unique animal characteristics that appear beautiful to the human eye. His arguments have merit but are only one perspective on the topic, but Prum has written this book with care and addresses some of the other views in a fair way. I came away impressed that he might just be right. But whether he is or not, I learned a great deal and enjoyed the ride.
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- Tomaso
- 08-06-18
Evolution update
I love well written science books but often seem to have trouble finding one. This book was a gem! Entertaining, enlightening and educational. My wife heard me listening to the book and she was hooked. A caveat: we both are big Darwin fans and rate this up there with Quaamen's Song of the Dodo which we also love.
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