Sexual Behaviour in Birds
Abstract
WHAT Dr. Marshall is so good as to say in NATURE of Oct. 26 in regard to my advocacy of the principle of inter-sexual selection makes it, I think, incumbent upon me to point out that I did not originate the idea of this, any more than of sexual selection in the ordinary sense. Darwin had considered the possibilities here also, but unfavourably, which I attribute myself to the want of sufficient evidence at that time. He indeed makes prominent mention of certain cases in which the usual order of courtship, as between the sexes, is reversed, but does not say anything (unless I am mistaken) in regard to mutuality in this respect, or of another factor which seems to me to have profound bearing on the question. I allude to functional hermaphroditism in birds which, in so far as alternate preparation is concerned, I recorded in the Zoologist (May 1902) in the case of the great-crested grebe, and, later, in Wild Life (July and August 1915) in that of the little grebe, where such preparation was carried into action under conditions not admitting of doubt. Thus the common ideas as to the profound psychological and temperamental differences between the `ardent' male bird and the `coy' female would seem to be based on error, to the consequent weaken- irig of any argument so arrived at. The erotic foundations being similar on either side, the super- structure raised on them might very well also be, and this, I think, as tending to dispose of an initial difficulty, makes the class of fact above mentioned my principal contribution to evidence in a case which had been opened and still remained sub judice at a time when I had nothing about it in my notes.
- Publication:
-
Nature
- Pub Date:
- November 1929
- DOI:
- 10.1038/124761a0
- Bibcode:
- 1929Natur.124..761S