A Taste for the Beautiful: The Evolution of Attraction

by Michael J. Ryan

From one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, the astonishing story of how the female brain drives the evolution of beauty in animals and humans

Darwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colors of butterflies and fishes to the songs of birds and frogs. He argued that animals have “a taste for the beautiful” that drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful. But if Darwin explained why sexual beauty evolved in animals, he struggled to understand how . In A Taste for the Beautiful , Michael Ryan, one of the world’s leading authorities on animal behavior, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off and transformed our understanding of sexual selection, shedding new light on human behavior in the process.

Drawing on cutting-edge work in neuroscience and evolutionary biology, as well as his own important studies of the tiny Túngara frog deep in the jungles of Panama, Ryan explores the key Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful and others not? Do animals have an inherent sexual aesthetic and, if so, where is it rooted? Ryan argues that the answers to these questions lie in the brain―particularly of females, who act as biological puppeteers, spurring the development of beautiful traits in males. This theory of how sexual beauty evolves explains its astonishing diversity and provides new insights about the degree to which our own perception of beauty resembles that of other animals.

Vividly written and filled with fascinating stories, A Taste for the Beautiful will change how you think about beauty and attraction.

Genres: Science, Nature, Nonfiction, Evolution, Biology, Psychology, Animals

208 pages, Hardcover

Published January 30, 2018

Reviews

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an ok book that had some interesting facts, mixed with kind of obvious scientific findings, and a few questionable studies. The author seems somehow a bit naive, and sticks to research and lines of thinking that match his hypotheses and world view, and doesn't spend any time on counter examples or more exceptional situations. Therefore if you read the book uncritically, it's a wonderful explanation and everything makes sense; but if you stop and think about it, you can often find counter examples that make you wonder how generalizeable his explanations are.

The novel idea that the author introduces is pretty neat; that "beautiful" traits can evolve not because they serve a purpose, but because they tap into a pre-existing preference the choosing mate has. Recurring examples of this are preferences for the color of foods (e.g. reds) or symmetry. While these can often also be a marker of good health, the specific form they take in every species varies according to these "hidden preferences" that are not specifically beneficial. A nice example of this is in 2 species of closely related fish, one with ornamental tails, the other without; when scientists added tail ornaments to the species without, those fish were preferred by their own females, thus demonstrating that the preference was already in place, and all it took was the sudden appearance of tail mutations to change the trajectory of the other species.
The book gets into various details on different mechanisms that further push and pull these evolved traits designed towards sexual attraction, such as the obvious trade-off between catching a potential mate's attention and a predator's attention, to the less obvious impact of Weber's law putting a cap on how extreme a trait can evolve.

The main problem with the book was the author's rather naive view of beauty, sexual attraction and evolution. Throughout the book, he never makes the distinction between "beautiful" and "sexually stimulating", basically implying that animals always see each other and various sexual traits as "beautiful". While there's no reason to believe animals can't appreciate beauty, it's obvious from our own experience that not all beautiful things are sexually attractive, and not all sexually attractive things are beautiful. This is obvious when considering a gay man and a straight man, both of which would say the same woman is beautiful, but only one would actually be sexually attracted to her. Vice versa, male genitals are rarely considered "beautiful" by women, just sexually interesting. So if a female frog prefers to mate with a male frog that makes "chuck" sounds, it could be that it appeals to the lady's aesthetics, but it could also just be pushing the right sex buttons in her brain. The distinction between aesthetic beauty and sexual attraction is not usually terribly important, it just gives this veneer of 18th century romanticism to animal sex lives.

This sort of smoothing over the details of attraction and beauty becomes a problem when the author starts speculating. In particular, he introduces the concept of MHC genes. The idea is roughly that MHC produces slight changes in animals' (and humans in particular) odors, allowing individuals to identify conspecifics who are genetically different than themselves, making them a good mate. It was sort of found (but there are some counter studies) that women prefer the odors of men with different MHC genes from themselves, but when on contraception preferred men with similar MHC genes. The author speculates this may be because contraceptives "trick" the brain into believing the body is pregnant, and so the woman is better off looking for family to help raise the child rather than genetically diverse mates. Extending the argument to the next level, a couple who meet and fall in love while the woman is on contraceptives might suddenly find her partner unappealing and too much like family when she goes off the pill. Ignoring the possibility that the studies could be flawed (such as failing to account for correlated variables), what's really wrong with this line of reasoning is that it is essentially implying that evolution would make pregnant women sexually attracted to family members! This would not have happened if the author had in his mind the actual distinction between sexual attraction, and just attraction.

Lastly, the author occasionally slips, and falls for the fallacy of viewing evolution as being by design, with a purpose. This occurs multiple times, but two telling quotes are: "what we do not see are the graveyard of [evolution's] attempts to be beautiful" (there are no attempts, only accidents that prove useful to the individual, and later species) and "Amazon mollies resulted from an evolutionary mistake" (all genetic changes are "mistakes"; if anything, a mistake that manages to lead to a successful species wasn't much of a mistake after all).
This is not just about nit picking; having this flawed understanding of evolution will mean misinterpreting the data and trying to push for hypotheses based on purpose, asking baseless questions like "why did this evolve?" rather than "how did this evolve?"

[Haley Essington · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about all the different experiments on animal behavior that he included in this and overall I think I learned a lot, but he tends to talk down to the audience and seems to think his readers can’t remember something he said in the previous chapter lol. But overall this was cool and it had pictures of frogs and fish so that was nice

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book.

It's clear that Mr. Ryan knows his subject matter, and there were tons of fascinating stories. However, I kept getting distracted by the constant summarizing. I joked with my partner that I could find the phrase "In the previous chapter" on any page I opened at random; sure enough it worked the three times I tried. I couldn't tell if he was trying to fill space or if he thought the reader would not be able to retain information across chapters.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Taste for the Beautiful provides a fairly good overview of how natural selection and sexual selection work to modify animal lifeforms in their beauty, with details of how sensory exploitation, asymmetrically dominated theory and hidden preference work. Some attention is paid to fertility ornamentation and reproduction expediting psychological adaptation, which is highly interesting.

Maybe the best part is discussion around the attraction of smells and the power of olfactory communication. This includes humans. We don't fully realize we do it, but we detect the smell of people for their major histocompatibility complex (mhc), genes important in immune response which are different in everyone. We are attracted to sex partners with different mhc genes and we can smell them (though we don't realize that impacts how attractive someone seems to us.) And so, the smell of the other sex is good if exotic enough but not attractive if that person of the other sex is a sibling! Pregnant women however, find the smell of familiarity more attractive, which may indicate the preference for building familial support in preparation for a baby.

Most of the book is not about people, but rather, frogs fish and birds. And this is part of why the book struggles-- it does too much in too few of pages. Everything is just an overview, not with enough detail nor nuance. When I got this book I realized I made a mistake, confusing this one for a similarly titled book covering similar subject matter in twice the amount of pages. The scale of coverage in this book for the amount of details given is just too light, and this makes the book itself less valid seeming. That's because almost all discussions of sexual selection and natural selection are complex, and summing them up too quickly comes at a cost to their representation.

This was especially obvious in the last chapter, which was rushed to the point of sounding dishonest. The coverage of human sexual interests and their exploitation in pornography is painfully thin. The author also abuses the word fetish, applying it far too broadly, not accurately.

Great subject matter. Some fairly good tid bits. It's not detailed or nuanced enough and covers too many things broadly to be really good though. Not bad for someone if they are brand new to the subject matter.

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me informó de su existencia un buen amigo que pretendía también leérselo, aunque después de haber sido yo la primera que lo leyó, no estoy muy segura de si se atreverá a terminárselo. Es muy repetitivo centrándose la mayoría del tiempo en las ranas, de las que terminas un poco harta. Pensaba que iba a ser un libro de divulgación científica general y se ha centrado en un par de especies, con leves, aunque interesantes, referencias al género humano. El estilo del autor es entretenido con notas de humor salpicando el libro, y por eso mismo ha conseguido que me lo terminase. Pero no era lo que yo me esperaba, tal vez porque mi amigo también tenía otras expectativas y me las contagió. Si hubiera sido más breve y hubiera quitado la mayor parte de las referencias a las ranas (dichosas ranas) le hubiera subido la puntuación.

[Matt Koser · Rating 2 out of 5]

We’ll that was interesting.

The author is writing from a naturalistic evolutionary perspective. His thesis is that beautiful attributes evolve in animals because of preexisting preferences. Beauty results in reproduction which furthers survival.

It’s a pretty empty and lacking view of beauty—beauty’s purpose is survival.

This was a very technical and boring read, but he did a good job trying to keep it entertaining.
______
My ⭐️ rating criteria
- ⭐️: I absolutely did not like or totally disagreed with the book and would recommend that no one else read it
- ⭐️⭐️: the book was below average style or content, arguments were very weak, wouldn’t read it again, but wouldn’t beg people not to read it necessarily
- ⭐️⭐️⭐️: a fine book, some helpful information (or a decent story, for the handful of novels I read), maybe I disagreed somewhat, enjoyed it decently well
- ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: a very good book, information was very helpful, mostly agreed with everything or it was a strong argument even if I disagree, was above-average enjoyable to read
- ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: incredible book, I enjoyed it more than most other books, I want to read it again in the future, I will be telling everyone to read it for the next few weeks

[Joseph Adelizzi, Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel the pause of being some exception to the rule as I prepare to comment on Michael J. Ryan’s awe-inspiring book A Taste for the Beautiful; I live a blessed life in spite of having a challenging relationship with “the beautiful.” Thankfully that challenging relationship does not keep me from appreciating the excellence of this book. Every chapter presents so many new ideas, ideas which once expertly explicated by Ryan come off as expected, logical, almost simple - the hallmark of an excellent teacher who thoroughly understands and embraces a topic.

One of my favorite sacred activities is to head off into the woods by myself and just stand silently by a pond or a creek and stare at its surface. At first it is difficult to see anything but the shimmering surface… but then I notice some rocks on the bottom….. then some plants....... then maybe some insects hunting and hiding in the shimmer..... then tiny fish appear… suddenly fish seem to be everywhere….... and if I’m lucky......... if it’s the right time of year... I may see some tadpoles, some almost-frogs. Patient attention reveals variety, similarity, order, chaos, struggle, achievement, wonder and beauty.

Reading Ryan’s A Taste for the Beautiful was for me the literary equivalent of those creek-side epiphanies. It’s beautiful.

[Mathias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Själen förklaras av evolutionära principer, Därför måste den som vill förstå människans själ förstå evolutionsbiologi

[Anup Sinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding job by Michael Ryan, evaluating beauty and its perception from a scientific and evolutionary perspective. His narrative is conversational and appealing even to non-scientific professionals. He's made me look at the entire topic a whole lot differently and, sadly enough, exposed the roots behind some of my own deep-seated opinions on beauty.

[E B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an absolute pleasure to read, both because of the fascinating subject matter and Ryan's straightforward way of explaining complex ideas and attention to inclusivity in his writing.

Turning studies of mate choice theory around and focusing on the choosers rather than the individuals which perform displays or have evolved to be attractive, this introduced was a brand new way of looking at the evolution of sexual traits for me, one which blows apart the usual one-sided way of studying behaviours.

Ryan's writing should be held up as an example of the way science should be approached for two main reasons:
1. I really, really appreciate the way he cited other scientists throughout A Taste for the Beautiful. I have read other popular science books where the lead author on a paper is the only person given credit for making a discovery, or where male scientists from western countries particularly are described lavishly while women and PoC are only given cursory mentions, and it makes a huge difference when every person mentioned in a book is given the same degree of respect (including grad students in this case).

2. Mate choice and sexual selection by nature requires a binary view of gender, and yet Ryan makes a clear distinction between the work he does with animals and his view on gender normative expectations. He started with a simple definition of biological sex (females produce eggs, males produce sperm), and finished by stating that not enough studies have been done on same-sex attraction both in humans and other animals but that it would be an interesting area to explore. Even just acknowledging that there are other facets of attraction and mate choice seems revolutionary compared to other books that I've read, and Ryan deserves praise for his attention to this aspect of his writing.

[Luiz Almeida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livro bem consistente e com belos exemplos para mostrar como a beleza de tudo depende de quem, ou o que está olhando. Visão, olfato e audição são intensamente explorados pelo autor para descrever o belo na natureza. O capítulo final levanta uma questão interessante do comportamento humano que a indústria pornográfica pode estar influenciando.
Quatro estrelas porque durante o livro todo o autor escreve que certas características/fenótipos "evoluiuram PARA alguma coisa". Quem compreende a teoria da evolução lógicamente consegue entender o significado da frase, mas pessoas que não estão tão acostumadas com a teoria podem ter uma percepção errada sobre o assunto.
Leitura leve e rápida com repetição e lembrança de vários conceitos, sempre lembrando o que foi dito nos capítulos anteriores. Não dá para se perder.

As frases "Beauty is in the brain of the beholder " e "Beauty is in the brain of the beer holder" são fantásticas.

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun an accessible book that argues that beauty is foremost in the brain of the beholder. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2018...

[Seth Wilpan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A better title for this book might have been "The Intricacies of Sexual Attraction". I came to this book with the expectation that it would reveal a biological source of aesthetics, but, as the author acknowledges in the last few words of the epilogue, that is not part of its scope.

In separate sections, the author reveals the technical details of how sight, hearing and smell interact with the brain to determine mating preferences. Those details are entertaining, but the basic principles under which they operate are similar in each case.
The chooser, in most cases the female, receives cues about the suitability of a potential mate and chooses the mate that best meets those criteria. So it is the chooser that drives the perpetuation of traits. Since the same traits that make an individual an attractive partner often make them more visible to predators, there is a brake on the extent to which attractive traits are cultivated. Traits that invite excessive predation are killed off and that defines the limit of male ostentation.

I was most surprised to learn that the role that cognitive bias plays a role in mate selection is not confined to humans. One of these biases is mate copying, in which individuals that have been chosen become more attractive to other potential choosers. Furthermore, the attractiveness of the original choosers influence the attractiveness of the chosen one. Another category of biases are comparative biases that come into play when there is a choice between two potential mates and the weight of their attractive qualities shifts based on the presence of a third choice. For example, if there is a choice between someone who is average looking with a good sense of humor and someone who is very good looking and an average sense of humor, the presence of a good-looking person with a bad sense of humor will give more weight to a sense of humor, and vice versa.

The author has a breezy, light-hearted style, and the technical details are easy to understand. If you are fascinated by the inner workings of biology, you'll enjoy this book.

[Craig Amason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I have read other books about the power of the senses in the animal kingdom, Ryan's book concentrates on how species have evolved to attract mates by appealing to the their senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. He goes beyond the typical discussion of the peacock's tail to explore such complicated and sophisticated characteristics such as frog croaking (his own research primarily deals with these amphibians), the color of marine life, the overlapping taste/smell mechanisms in most animals, and a whole host of specific sensory adaptations across the animal kingdom designed to improve the chances of passing on genes from one generation to the next.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing and even controversial sections comes at the end of the book where the author discusses pornography and entertains the question of whether or not it can be addictive. He refers to numerous experiments and research results over the last century that have resulted in remarkable discoveries about how animals attract one another sexually, how they select a partner, and how they reproduce. The mating rituals and the fertilization methods among some species are amazing. There is so much packed in this book of popular science that it certainly deserves a second pass. It's entertaining and informative, always a winning combination.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And it leads to Darwinian sexual selection.

Ryan did years of research on animal mating behaviour travelling the globe. Indeed what is considered beautiful in the male, such as bright red head ornament in birds, special chirping sounds, tall head crowns, nicer bowers, longer tail feathers, louder sounds, are all important in the female’s brain in choosing who the mate with. Losers don’t get to mate so those ‘beautiful’ traits get propagated together with those preferences.

However, those comes at a huge cost to the male as those same traits tend to attract also the predators. Males eaten do not mate. Thus it is a fine balance between mating and death!

Some males make use of tricks to fool the female to mate, like disguising parts of their body as food and making sounds of a predictor to freeze a female moth.

There are also hidden preferences which are revealed only when genetic mutation causes the male to display the more preferred gene. It is like an artist trying different styles to see which ones ‘catch’ the liking of the audience.

A solid 5 star book!

[Landon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot about a subject that I am deeply interested in - but the writing was clunky and formulaic, and the structure was poorly organized. The author has an interesting point to make about sexual selection - that the evolution of sexual traits like peacock feathers or bright coloring tend to hitchhike onto other preferences already present in the prospective mate - but I found myself having to really dig into all of the various examples and stories to get there. As for the writing, it was very much structured like a scientific paper rather than a popular science book, but it didn't succeed at being either. I would be happy with a deeper science-focused book, but this book did not come close to delivering the theories and formulas behind the science. Too many awkwardly inserted references and not enough population genetics. At the same time, I can enjoy a good high-level popular science book, but the writing has to be engaging and better driven to making a point and tying everything together.

[kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Explored the part of sexual selection just for aesthetic alone. Tried to explain the idea that preference lies within the brain of the beholder and how it reacts with the various senses leading to what is considered attractive. The attractiveness may have arisen from something different to start with for the senses and hence, led to this notion that it is not always about fitness. Brought out the concept of the sexual marketplace akin to a platform of sorts between one side choosing the other, usually female does the choosing, or both sides choosing.

I thought the book explained most of the concepts well in a simple way, sometimes with a human sociology analogy. Majority of examples does seem to fall within frogs and finches, which get mentioned more than the usual. I also wonder if the human comparison yielded biases which make me relate the facts with a human lens.

Haven’t read this genre and I think it is worth a read or listen(I listened on a audio book)

[Leslie Hanshew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fascinating! I'm not much of a hard science reader, but Michael J. Ryan turns complicated facts and figures into a mesmerizing journey into what makes animals fall in love, or at least want to do the deed. I know more about frogs and what makes them sexy to other frogs than I ever thought possible! He's also extremely witty and funny, traits not often found in a science book (at least I certainly don't remember this from my high school textbooks). I actually had some LOL moments (RE: the smelly t-shirt experiment) and I learned a ton. I would definitely read more of Ryan's books!

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook review. Good reader.

The book is about sexual selection and biological mechanisms by which sexual selection occurs. His main theory has to do with how selection depends on the choosers brain and senses. He then proceeds through a myriad examples dealing with visual, auditory and olfactory systems of various animals. The whole thing reminded me of the book ‘kludge’ which has a similar central premise about evolution being constrained by the available chemistry, physiology, and behavior of the species at the time. The author is a professor and writes like one which is to say it’s technical and accurate but not quite as accessible as some popular science writers.

[Luis Rendón · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Ryan nos llena de ejemplos biológicos (principalmente de anfibios y aves de América del sur) de como se percibe la belleza según la especie animal y los sentidos del oído, olfato y vista. En general es un buen libro pero a veces repetitivo en sus explicaciones y en las especies que utiliza como ejemplos; lo interesante es como relacionada cada sentido con la apreciación de la belleza y sus posibles razones evolutivas.

[Chien-Wei Kung · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read. Ryan knows his stuff and amazed me with his stories of experiments and observations in mating behavior in the animal kingdom. I was mesmerized by the visual, auditory, and olfactory traits that animals like birds, moths, fish, and frogs utilize in trying to attract a mate. Though I personally do not believe in macroevolution, it was interesting to read how an evolutionary biologist interprets certain features and behaviors of animals.

[David Arch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Examines Darwin’s lesser known theory of sexual selection and how it drives ‘beauty’ in the natural world. Focuses on advances in neuroscience to help explain how potential mates evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful

[Davide · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saggio migliore che ho letto quest'anno. Anche perché risponde a domande che mi ero posto più volte leggendo altri libri sulla selezione sessuale, concernenti i bias preesistenti nelle preferenze femminili

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, but I've read most of the content before. It's impressive that he was with Melvin Tuttle when he wrote his groundbreaking book about bats. If you've never read much about sexual selection, this is a good overview.

[Matt Feragne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting ideas! I really like where this book has been going!

[Unna · Rating 5 out of 5]

TBR

[Jessie Tanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book might be a great way to explore ideas related to sexual selection for the non-biologist. It has an interesting way of incorporating anecdotes about the scientists involved with their ideas.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read. Possibly a little loosy go0sy with conclusions but I like it!

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insight into sexual selection and the evolution of beauty by a man that knows what he is talking about.

[Chris Geggis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is extremely attractive on many levels. It thought it was one of the best books I read all year.