To chuck or not to chuck? Túngara frogs & evolutionary responses to the puzzle of natural beauty

Abstract

What explains the generation of such beautiful natural phenomena as the dances and songs of birds, the iridescent colours of the hummingbird, the twisted horns of the kudu antelope, and the convolutions of mollusk shells? What explains this seeming gratuitousness and variety of beautiful natural forms? This is the puzzle of natural beauty. Evolutionary responses to the puzzle include the Darwin-Prum sexual selection response and the Wallace-Zahavi honest signaling response. I intend neither to weigh the respective merits of the Darwin-Prum and Wallace-Zahavi responses nor to assess the fruitfulness of extending these evolutionary responses to include both the production and preference of beautiful ornaments in nature and the human practices of producing and preferring beautiful objects. Rather, my intention is to critically assess these evolutionary responses to the puzzle of natural beauty, with a particular focus on the courtship displays of the túngara frog.