Taste for the Beautiful: The Evolution of Attraction

From one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, the astonishing story of how the female brain drives the evolution of beauty in animals and humans.

Darwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colours of butterflies and fishes to the songs of birds and frogs.

He argued that animals have 'a taste for the beautiful' that drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful.

But if Darwin explained why sexual beauty evolved in animals, he struggled to understand how.

Here, Michael Ryan, one of the world's leading authorities on animal behaviour, tells the remarkable story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off.