This Valentine’s Day, Go Public or Go Home - Issue 33: Attraction
▻http://nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/this-valentines-day-go-public-or-go-home-rp
Skeptics may call Valentine’s Day a Hallmark holiday, but its appeal is deeply embedded in our nature. Evolutionarily speaking, courtship rituals are far older than Saint Valentine. Nautilus spoke with Ken Kraaijeveld, an evolutionary biologist at VU University Amsterdam, about the rules of attraction, what females want, and how the heck anyone can even begin to guess. Which animals celebrate a sort of Valentine’s Day? Birds that breed every season do. For example, King Penguins are fantastically patterned, and when a new pair meets, they stand opposite one another and shake their heads vigorously. I imagine King Penguins would be much more inclined to keep up Valentine’s Day exhibitions every year than birds with long-term commitments. Those tend to look much more drab, and they (...)