By Sophia Bel
If you’ve got a date this Valentine’s Day, congratulations! If you plan on spending the night inside playing video games, that’s cool, too. Whether you manage to find someone to share something special with or you’re buying yourself flowers, you get to choose what you do on February 14th — a choice unique to humans.
Most animals and other organisms subject to natural selection don’t have the luxury of choosing their romantic availability, as reproducing and passing on genes is a concept that the kingdom of life revolves around. Coded within any sexually reproducing organism’s brain is the ultimate goal of finding a mate, and the arms race — also known as evolution — has produced some pretty interesting methods of ensuring individuals can secure a date. From penguins proposing with pebbles to snails shooting darts at each other to males of certain spider species presenting themselves as meals to the females, you’ll find a mating ritual for practically any adjective imaginable.
Perhaps the most flamboyant of mating rituals belongs to the family of birds known as the birds-of-paradise. Their rituals have the classic element of the female choosing the male she finds best fit to pass on his genes, but due to the extreme choosiness of the females, male birds-of-paradise have continuously evolved brighter plumage and more complicated dance routines.
This is a concept known as the Red Queen Hypothesis: species are constantly in competition, so evolution becomes a continuous one-up contest to see who can develop the better adaptations, and ultimately survive. Named after the ruthless queen in Alice in Wonderland, who explained to Alice that it “takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place”, it’s an intriguing idea that encapsulates well the evolution of male birds-of-paradise. Their dances, feathers, and nests must be impeccable (ha) in order to win over the selective ladies.
The most well-known birds-of-paradise are the dance stars of the avian world. These are the ones you might see videos of, bobbing their blue heads and busting some crazy moves that would easily land them on a human dance floor. Take Carola’s parotia, a species whose males prepare nine unique dances and rehearse tirelessly for the chance to mate. Females will be scrutinizing a male’s every move, and if a single feather is out of place, he might as well give up right there. Many male birds-of-paradise go their entire lives without winning a single female, living proof of the Red Queen Hypothesis’s brutality. The girls are in the driver’s seat of the species’ future by choosing who they allow to father the next generation of dancers.
But not all birds choose the flashy dancing route to impress potential partners. Some, such as MacGregor’s bowerbirds, opt for hard work and dedication as their method of choice. Male bowerbirds can spend as long as seven years building bowers, or towering sculptures of twigs, flowers, and any other natural decor they come across. These bowers can reach up to a meter tall, and the fancier and taller, the more likely it is to catch a female’s eye.
Once the bowerbird finds a potential suitor, he begins to show off a variety of other skills: mimicking the calls of other animals, including human speech, and playing a high-paced game of hide-and-seek around the bower with the female. If the female approves, she’ll sit atop the skyscraping bower, giving permission to the male to mate with her — a well deserved victory for the male bowerbird.
Each male bird-of-paradise does what he can to ensure his chances of reproducing and therefore fulfilling his life’s duty, but in the end, he’s got close to no control over his fate. All the natural selection is determined by the Red Queen Hypothesis and those picky females’ arbitrary preferences. It’s an intense life and one not to be jealous of. So if you’re spending your Valentine’s Day with some platonic friends or alone in your room, find some solace in the fact that you chose your own destiny that day, and unless you decide to let it happen, no one’s controlling your future either. And most thankfully, you’re not dancing your life away as a Carola’s parotia.
