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Such an experiment has never been devised, but those, like me, with a bias towards the Fisherians find several lines of argument fairly persuasive. Look around the world and what do you see? You see that the ornaments we are discussing are nothing if not arbitrary. Peacocks have eyes in their train; sage grouse have inflatable air sacs and pointed tails; nightingales have melodies of great variety and no particular pattern; birds of paradise grow bizarre feathers like pennants; bower birds collect blue objects. It is a cacophony of caprice and colour. Surely, if sexually selected ornaments told a tale of their owner’s vigour, they would not be so utterly random?

One other piece of evidence seems to weigh in the balance on the side of Fisher – the phenomenon of copying. If you watch a lek carefully you will see that the females often do not just make their own minds up individually; they follow each other. Sage grouse hens are more likely to mate with a cock who has just mated with another hen. In black grouse, which also lek, the cocks tend to mate several times in a row if at all. A stuffed female black grouse (known in this species as a greyhen), placed in a male’s territory, tends to draw other females to that territory – though not necessarily causing them to mate.29 In guppy fish, females that have been allowed to see two males, one of which is already courting a female, subsequently prefer that male to the other, even if the female that was being courted is no longer present.30 Such copying is just what you would expect if Fisher were right, because it is fashion-following for its own sake. It hardly matters whether the male chosen is the ‘best’ male; what counts is that he is the most fashionable, as his sons will be. If the Good-geners are right, females should not be so influenced by each other’s views. There is even a hint that peahens try to prevent each other copying, which would also make sense to a follower of Fisher.31 For if the goal is to have the sexiest son in the next generation, then one way of doing that is to mate with the sexiest husband; a second way is to prevent other females mating with the sexiest husband.

Ornamental Handicaps

If females pick males for the sexiness of their future sons, why should they not go for other genetic qualities, too? The Good-geners think that beauty has a purpose. Peahens choose genetically superior males in order to have sons and daughters who are equipped to survive, rather than just well equipped to attract mates.

The Good-geners can marshal as much experimental support as the Fisherians. Fruit flies given a free choice of mate produce young that prove tougher in competition with the young of those not allowed to choose.32 Female sage grouse, black grouse, great snipe, fallow deer and widow birds all seem to prefer the males on their leks that display most vigorously.33 If a stuffed greyhen is put on the boundary between two blackcocks’ dancing grounds, the two males fight over the right to monopolistic necrophilia. The winner is usually the male who is most attractive to living females and he is also more likely to survive the next six months than the other male. This seems to imply that attracting females is not the only thing he is good at.34 The brighter red a male house finch is, the more popular he is with the females; but he is also a better father – he provides more food for the babies – and will live longer – perhaps because he is genetically more disease resistant. By choosing the reddest male on offer, females are therefore getting superior survival genes as well as attractiveness genes.35

It is hardly surprising to find that the males best at seduction tend to be the best at other things as well; it does not prove that females are seeking good genes for their offspring. They might be avoiding feeble males lest they catch a virus from them. Nor do such observations damage the idea that the most important thing a sexy male can pass on to his sons is his sexiness – the Fisher idea. They merely suggest that he can also pass