Birds and Beauty - Nikola Kalapasev

In one of our classes last week, we took a listen to a podcast about some birds and why they don't have male genitals anymore (some other things too).  The podcast talked about how birds evolved to be without a penis, which they were thought to have in the past. Scientists are baffled as to why the birds would evolutionarily lose their penis, and they are still unsure to this day. In the podcast they talked about several theories that may or may not be plausible, one of them being so that the birds can fly better. However the podcasters didn't buy any of their own theories, so what gives? The podcasters talked about how the male birds wanted to be more aesthetic to the female birds for mating purposes. This was an interesting concept because the podcasters talk about bird being one of the only animals to choose their mates based off of aesthetics rather than normative means like brawn or intelligence. That facts was super interesting to me because I've never thought about it in that sense. I knew that birds had vibrant displays to attract mates, but it never clicked to me that female birds were chasing aesthetics. So by the female birds chasing aesthetics, they essentially augmented the evolution of their male counterparts which is very interesting to me. They also talked about a couple specific species of birds that have interesting mating rituals that I won't go into because I forgot about them, but overall the podcast was interesting and I learned a lot more about birds in that time frame then I probably ever had.