My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
It gives a lovely light!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Why do we admire the beauty of nature? Why do we make art? Is appreciation of beauty a product of natural selection (i.e., we don’t really value beauty for its own sake but for its survival value) or do we embrace it as something intrinsically pleasing to our inner selves? This question may seem academic to most of us, but I argue otherwise. If we are indeed hardwired to prize beauty for its own sake, then we should have more of it, and we short-change ourselves by ignoring or suppressing the artistic impulse.

Studies of animal behavior provide clues to the question just posed. If the appreciation of beauty is adaptive (in the Darwinian sense), then this trait should be widespread in the animal kingdom.

It is not. To be sure, some animals go to great lengths to display beauty the way a human artist or sculptor makes art. My favorite example is the bower bird. There are many species of bowerbirds. The flame bowerbird (Sericulus ardens) is one of the most beautiful. The male is a medium-sized bird, up to 25 cm long, with flame orange and golden yellow plumage, elongated neck plumes and yellow-tipped black tail. Yet, its radiant beauty is not enough to attract a mate. This is also true for other bowerbird species. So, when male bowerbirds are ready to court females, they set about building a nest-like structure for which they are named: an assemblage of twigs shaped into a spire, corridor or hut. They even decorate their bowers with scores of colorful objects, like flowers, berries, snail shells or, if they are near an urban area, bottle caps and plastic cutlery.

They go through all that trouble to woo the females. But that is still not enough. The final show of courtship is to dance and dance furiously. The males will bob and puff their chests, they will crouch low, then rise slowly, brandishing one wing in front of their heads like a magician’s cape. Suddenly, their whole body will convulse like a windup alarm clock. If the female approves, she will copulate with him for two or three seconds. After that, they will never meet again.

Impressive though this whole drama may be, the bower bird’s “art” is the exception, not the rule in the animal kingdom. To be sure, many male animals possess beautiful physical traits that help in courtship. Famous examples include the brilliant fan of a peacock’s tail and the incandescent plumage of many various species of birds of paradise. Even so, the natural adaptation theory is not fully convincing. Yes, beautiful plumes and long curly feathers do attract the attention of female suitors, but at what cost?  Not only do colorful feathers and elaborate “artistic” constructions lack obvious value outside of courtship, they attract the attention of predators and so lower the survival rates of males and by extension, the entire species. Nor is there universal evidence that females who mate with prettier males produce healthier offspring, implying that there is no guarantee that “good” genes will be passed on this way. In particular, a 2012 meta-analysis of 90 studies on 55 species found no strong support for the good-genes hypothesis. This doesn’t mean that beauty in the animal kingdom is random, or that it is never adaptive. It means that natural selection is not the only story, giving credence to the view animals, and by extension, we have an innate capacity to appreciate beauty for its own sake, which is why flowers are beautiful not only to bees but also to us.

Beauty is the answer to the audacity
of a flower, the way a bee spills across
the lip of a buttercup, the love with which
a satin bowerbird chooses a hibiscus bloom,
the impulse to paint water lilies
with oil and canvas, the need to place
roses on a grave.

Further Reading

Richard O. Plum, The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – and Us, Random House, 2018.

Richard O. Plum is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He has conducted field work throughout the world, and has studied fossil theropod dinosaurs in China. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.