Watch Borgia Season 1' title='Watch Borgia Season 1' />Animal Mating Article, Sexual Selection Information, Mate Choice Facts National Geographic. Its a blustery spring day in the Australian outback, the kind that makes you think rain must be on the way, although there hasnt been a drop in months, and the ground is brown and parched. Watch your favorite movies and tv shows online free on Putlocker. Discover thousands of latest movies online on Putlocker. In some animals, frogs for instance, a dry spring can slow down or stop altogether the normal, romantic inclinations that come this time of year. But the lack of rain hasnt deterred the male spotted bowerbirds. Under old peppertrees, thornbushes, and stands of oleanders, theyve built elaborate U shaped arenas of dried grasses, 1. Created by Tom Fontana. With Mark Ryder, Isolda Dychauk, Diarmuid Noyes, John Doman. It was the age of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, of enlightened creativity and. Read a National Geographic magazine article about animal mating behaviors and get information, facts, and more about sexual selection. Theyve decorated them with piles of sun bleached sheep vertebrae, shiny aluminum foil, pop tops from beer cans, shards of broken windshield glass, and little strips of red and blue plastic. The fanciest bowers feature special, seductive tidbits a silver fork, the shoe token from a Monopoly game, old gun shell casings, red, blue, and purple glass of the deepest hues. The birds have arranged their treasures with an eye to the lighthow does that bone pile look when the morning sun hits itand to their symmetry silver metal hoops of unknown origin, for example, placed at equal distances from opposite ends of the bower. Now a male can do little more than watch and wait. If hes built a good bower, then hell succeed in lifes ultimate contest and win the top prize a female who chooses him as a mate. This is about your reproductive success Straighten those straws Find some more bones Why be a C student. Hes stationed similar cameras with microphones at 2. Nyngan. The cameras are equipped with motion detection sensors and record whatever the male birdsor their female visitorsdo within the bowers. Later, in his University of Maryland lab, Borgias students will review the tapes, picking out the ones that show what male bowerbirds might dream about a female entering the straw bower, watching the male perform and sing for her, and, if she is well pleased, accepting him as a mate. Borgia isnt sentimental about this latter event, referring to it simply as a. I mean, thats pathetic. And theyre still here This new guy just hasnt made the effort to move them to his bower. Watch The Art Of The Steal Online Idigitaltimes. He rasps out a long series of skraas, then changes to the snarling, spitting sound of a cornered cat, and ends with a laughing call that sounds like a kookaburra. They use that skraa call in their courtship displays too, so there must be something about it that allows females to find genetically superior males. But hes got a lot to learn about how to build a bower, one that will attract the females and get him some action. In this species as with most birds, a male cant force a female to mate. Like a solo rock star, he must devise a bower, song, and dance that wows the gals. Among bowerbirds and most other animals as well, its the females that do the choosing. From fruit flies to elephants, females pick the male or males with which they want to mate. The males, in turn, compete with each other to get a females attention, each vying to show her that he will be the best sperm donor for her babies. That is why, evolutionary biologists say, males are most often the ornamented sex. It is why the male peacock unfurls his dazzling train, why male guppies are adorned with bright orange and blue spots, why male frogs call and male canaries sing. It is even why the genitalia of many males, particularly insects, are as fancy as an Aborigines embellished didgeridoo, with accoutrements far beyond whats required to get the job done. But its her game she sets the rules. And she makes the choice. He began to develop the notion while writing On the Origin of Species, in which he argued that the related theory of natural selection is the primary force in the evolution of all organisms. Natural selection goes far in explaining why one individual animal survives to pass on its genes to the next generation, while another dies leaving no descendants. It is why female birds are often drably colored to hide from predators when incubating their eggs, and why gazelles are built for speed to outrun their enemies. But natural selection does not explain features that would seem to hinder an animals survival, such as the male peacocks extravagant plumage or a male elks heavy and unwieldy antlers. How did such unlikely traitsones that seem to run counter to every Darwinian rule for staying alivecome about Even Darwin struggled to find a reason, once writing to a friend,. According to Darwin, sexual selection shapes species in two waysby giving rise to competition among males for mates, and via females decisions to mate with particular males. Essential Killing Full Movie Online Free'>Essential Killing Full Movie Online Free. Darwins fellow evolutionists readily accepted the part of the sexual selection theory suggesting that male competition plays a role in evolution. Watch Fed Up Online here. Many males are equipped with horns and antlers or other weapons, while females are not, and its easy to see that a male elk with a large rack would have an advantage over his rivals. He could use his antlers to defeat his competitors and mate with more females. And that would give him the chance to have more sons that would inherit his genes for big antlers and his abilities both to defeat other males and inseminate many females. But the part of the theory suggesting that females choose matesthus shaping male physiology and behavior and influencing a species evolutionwas immediately attacked from all sides. Another proponent of the theory of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, particularly despised the notion and actively lobbied against it. He argued that males were brightly colored and given to song because of their. For Wallace, natural selection covered everything, including male competition. And he found the idea that females choose mates because they prefer a particular color or ornament ludicrous because it suggested a faculty for taste and discrimination that he believed to be beyond most animals. Throughout most of the 2. Wallaces opinion prevailed, and Darwins theory of sexual selection, with its offshoot of female choice, was largely ignored. Now, of course, we have tons of examples that show that Darwin was right Its most often the females that choose. In their search to understand how and what females choose, scientists have uncovered an entirely new world of the startling and steamy Fruit flies that for their tiny body size produce some of the largest sperm in the animal kingdom male millipedes with special legs that exist solely to rhythmically massage a females reproductive tract, apparently a stimulation she needs before allowing him to inseminate her a protein in a male mouses saliva that tells a female mouse if hes Mr. Right. And theyve discovered that the females of numerous invertebrates are equipped with sperm storage organs, special pockets where they hold the males fluid, perhaps assessing its quality. Scientists speculate that the females may nurture the sperm if they accept the contribution, or destroy them if not. The biggest boost to the theory of female choice came from a highly influential paper written by evolutionist Robert Trivers in 1. Reproduction is not an equal equation, said Trivers. Males and females invest different amounts of energy and resources into producing offspring. Males produce many relatively cheap sperm, but females make a set number of expensive eggs. So it makes sense that males compete for access to females, and that females are choosy about the male, or males, they let fertilize them. The big question then becomes What do the females want Some researchers have speculated that a males ornaments and vocal beguilements carry information about the quality of his genes, or his immune system, or his parenting abilities. Others have suggested that there is little information in these secondary sexual traits they exist solely to attract the female.