Abstract

Why do many male birds display specific colorful patterns on their plumage? The demand-relationship theory explains that beauty preferences reflect human and birds’ desire for approaching some objects; these patterns look beautiful because they resemble their ideal food sources or environments. Mutants that have enhanced human and birds’ ability and motivation in finding these were hence selected by nature. Such beauty preferences of the female birds then selected the male plumage. Some convincing photos are provided. A statistical analysis about inference “If a bird has yellow feather then it probably likes eating nectar” shows that this inference has higher confirmation measure and conveys more semantic information than inference “If a person has high triglyceride then he probably also has fatty liver”.

Keywords: Beauty preferences; Sexual selection; Demand-relationship theory; Food resources; Colorful plumage; Hypothesis testing; Shannon’s information; Semantic information; confirmation measure