YSM Issue 91.1

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Science in the Spotlight The Evolution of Beauty By Megha Chawla PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY ZHOU 4.5/5 The Evolution of Beauty is a compelling and insightful look at beauty in nature through the eyes of Richard O. Prum, the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale. The book is Prum’s response to decades of research in the evolutionary sciences that have embraced Darwinian thought and theory of natural selection, while woefully ignoring Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Through a lifetime of observing birds in nature and researching the evolution of ornamental beauty, Prum contends to revive the arbitrary sexual selection hypothesis, or as he calls it, “Beauty Happens.” According to Prum, animals have subjective tastes and preferences and the agency to act upon them via mate choice. Prum compares adaptationists, who believe that all traits have evolved to provide a better chance of survival and communicate information about mate quality, to economic theorists, who expect actors in a free market to behave completely rationally and purposefully. “Of course,” Prum says, “Evolution, like markets, is spurred by the irrational and subjective choices of its actors.” He provides a motley of colorful examples from the bird world to support this hypothesis, like the evolution of the male peacock’s seemingly useless tail which may even be harmful to survival, but has persisted because the ladies like it. In the animal kingdom, it is often the female who chooses a mate among available males. Because of this, Prum’s argument also has a feminist flair. He describes how male and female ducks’ genitalia and the male bowerbird’s elaborate bower-building ritual might have evolved for the same purpose—to protect females from forced copulation. Prum even extends his hypothesis to the evolution of the female orgasm in great apes and the size and shape of the human penis, claiming that female sexual autonomy has led to their evolution—or, in his words, “Pleasure Happens.” The Evolution of Beauty is interdisciplinary at its core, and Prum passionately comments on evolution from multiple perspectives. While the book has been well-received—the New York Times named it as one of the ten best books of 2017—Prum says the response from the scientific community has been mostly mute. “I’m perfectly happy to lose the battle and win the war,” he said, hoping his work will inspire further research recognizing aesthetic preference as a strong force in evolution. On the whole, The Evolution of Beauty endures as a brilliant anthology of beauty and desire in the natural world, written in engaging prose that is vivid, graphic, and at times unexpectedly funny. Prum humorously and appropriately quotes Sean Hannity’s remarks on his research: “Don’t we really need to know about duck sex?” If you thought you, like Sean Hannity, didn’t care about the mating habits of ducks, or never gave them any thought at all, this book will make you strongly reevaluate your indifference. 38 Yale Scientific Magazine March 2018 www.yalescientific.org
Science in the Spotlight The Great Quake By Vikram Shaw IMAGE COURTESY OF USGS 5/5 At 5:36 p.m. on Good Friday, March 27, 1964, a violent shaking disrupted a peaceful Friday night in the village of Chenega, Alaska. The villagers, primarily Alutiiq natives, noticed the water level of their cove rapidly recede, curiously exposing the bottom of the ocean floor. The villagers knew what it meant, but many of them did not have enough time to get out. Moments later, a thirty-five-foot-high wall of water came barreling towards them. In a compelling tale of disaster, resilience, and scientific discovery, New York Times journalist and Yale graduate Henry Fountain tells the story of the biggest recorded earthquake in the history of North America in his new book, The Great Quake. After Fountain wrote an article in the New York Times about the quake’s 50th anniversary, an editor at a New York book publisher told him that the story sounded like a good book. Fountain quickly mobilized, and by the end of 2015, he had visited Alaska for a couple of months and completed most of his research. “I wanted to tell the narrative of the people affected and tell the tale of science through the eyes of George,” Fountain said. George Plafker, a geologist who started with little knowledge of earthquakes but a lot of knowledge of the Alaskan backcountry, was one of the main players behind the scientific breakthroughs that the quake catalyzed. At the turn of the century, earthquake science was young and misguided. Eduard Suess, for example, put forth the leading earthquake theory of the time by comparing the earth to a drying apple that would wrinkle as it shrank. A small minority of scientists instead favored the emerging ideas—rejected by most—that would later become known as plate tectonics. It was not until after the Alaskan quake, however, that Plafker helped settle the debate. The book tells the stories of the two communities that were hit the hardest by the quake: Valdez, a small costal town that arose from the Gold Rush, and Chenega, a village of around eighty native Alaskans and an American schoolteacher. Following these two villages through the disaster, the book is both exciting to read and informative. Fountain makes sure that no details are spared when it comes to the moments leading up to and just after the quake. He also details the months on end spent by many geologists, including Plafker, who dedicated their lives to understanding what happened. Fountain closes his book with a sobering reminder: by several estimates, including Plafker’s, the Pacific Northwest is due for a megathrust earthquake—the same kind that occurred in Alaska. “The Northwest will probably have a quake like it in the next 50 years,” Fountain said. “They’re all expecting it to happen.” www.yalescientific.org March 2018 Yale Scientific Magazine 39
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YSM Issue 91.1

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