Birds, Sex and Beauty: A lively take on evolution and attraction

Matt Ridley's book revisits Darwin's sexual selection theory, exploring how birds choose mates-and what it reveals about beauty, evolution, and human assumptions

Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin’s Strangest Idea   by Matt Ridley

Published by HarperCollins

352 pages ₹599 

Do you ever wonder if humans are the only species obsessed with physical appearance in the matter of choosing a partner? What do birds look for before initiating sexual intimacy? To what extent does their perception of beauty play into who they decide to mate and have babies with? 

Matt Ridley’s Birds, Sex and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin’s Strangest Idea is a book worth reading if these questions tickle your curiosity. You might be surprised as to how much we have in common with winged creatures. At the same time, it is helpful to rein in our tendency to project human feelings and values onto the non-human. 

An evolutionary biologist by training, the author writes lively, engaging prose that feels approachable to people like myself who are interested in science but often find the jargon intimidating. His introduction to evolutionary theory, for instance, begins with an atmospheric description of the lek, “an elaborate courtship ritual of preening, squabbling and strutting male birds”, that he is observing in England as part of his study of a bird called the black grouse. 

The book explores in great detail the significance, critique and implications of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin’s proposition that “females were capable of choosing and that male display (of bright colours and fancy feathers) was all about influencing female choice”. Another key evolutionary thinker, Alfred Russel Wallace, who was Darwin’s contemporary, was of the opinion that bright plumage was a sign of health and vitality rather than a tool of seduction. 

Ridley does an excellent job of teasing out how scientific thinking is not untouched by human morality. Darwin and Wallace were writing during the Victorian period, known for sexual repression, prudishness, and control of women’s bodies. Darwin’s attempt to bat for female agency was crushed by Wallace’s conservatism. Ridley calls him “more Catholic than the pope”. 

This quirky sense of humour makes the book enjoyable. Self-admittedly, Ridley’s writing style is also influenced by his fondness for naturalist Gerald Durrell and biologist Richard Dawkins. He reconciles Durrell’s sense of wonder with Dawkins’ penchant for rigorous analysis. 

In this book, you will encounter some delightful literary references — William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Samuel Beckett and more — while reading about sexual competition between male birds, and female birds’ proclivity towards attractive males who will at least provide high-quality sperm even if their participation in childcare will be minimal. 

Ridley is fascinated by intellectual debates around whether beauty is a criterion while selecting mates. Biologist Patrick Geddes and naturalist J Arthur Thomson believed that aesthetic appreciation requires special training, which Ridley refutes with a chuckle-inducing argument: “A bird can appreciate beauty without having been on a university course in aesthetics”. 

Philosopher Helena Cronin is less cheeky in her formulation, but she urges us to reflect on something she discovered in Darwin’s notebooks. She claims that “it was part of his perpetual campaign of showing continuity between people and other animals”. Apparently, he wanted to challenge the idea of human exceptionalism by showing that birds, too, care about beauty. This makes one wonder about avian equivalents to human preoccupations like wearing perfume, painting nails, shaving and waxing to make themselves desirable to prospective partners. 

One of the most hilarious statements in the book is this: “Why do curlews and skylarks sing throughout the spring? Why don’t they sing till they get a mate, then shut up?” Ridley is not being silly here. He is questioning the Darwinian assumption that sexual selection is tied to reproduction. Darwin himself was a man of his time. Monogamy was celebrated as the ideal. 

We learn from Ridley’s book that later biologists stumbled upon something unexpected. He writes, “Even as his mate is laying or incubating eggs, a male curlew or skylark is hard at work advertising his quality to the neighbouring females in case they fancy a secret liaison.” This sounds a lot like married humans who meet people on dating apps without telling their spouses. 

Ridley’s analysis misses out on critiquing the heteronormative assumptions underlying discussions of sexual selection by Darwin and others. Thankfully, scholars like Bruce Bagemihl, Molly Wagner, George Hunt and Joan Roughgarden have written about same-sex pairings among birds. Homosexuality is not stigmatised or criminalised. It is seen as natural. 

That said, this book is worth reading, especially if you want to learn about the unethical research practices that go into studying bird behaviour. Ridley tells us about scientists like David Lack, J P Kruijt, Jerry Hogan, and Rauno Alatalo who have tricked male birds by placing dead, stuffed female birds close to them, and urging them to copulate with these “dummies”. 

It is shameful to think about how much humans get away with. Our notion of rights is horribly anthropocentric.

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The reviewer is an independent journalist, educator and literary critic. Instagram/X: @chintanwriting