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Showing posts from September, 2011

The spirit of LIFE, sexual selection

OK, natural selection is the retroactive mechanism in evolution. But sexual selection is proactive, it's all the singing birds, and the stubborn determination of people to control their environment and to change the environment of other living beings. If it wasn't for sexual selection, an extra layer of life would be taken away from evolution. In fact, sexual selection changes the pool of properties of living things, be them genes or behavioural patterns, more than natural selection ever could. Natural selection is a rather rudimentary process by which the utmost unsuitable, on the fringe organisms and their genes get removed, those that have ceased to be complementary to their environment. That leaves all those others, and there are quite a lot in between. Essentially, contrary to what may appear like an obvious "designer", natural selection does not shape perfectly suited organisms to their environments. It removes the unsuited ones, but of those which remain, they