Sheep-Goats posted:

I saw an experiment one time where they took some little round brown chirpy birds and glued feathers on top of their heads. Like, one feather, about as tall as the head was, sticking straight up, with a dot of glue. The birds with no added feather got to gently caress the smallest number of female birds. The ones with the brown feather got a few more. The ones with the white feather got like six times the cloaca of the featherless birds. The other colors were in the middle.

Birds like fancy feathers and different birds like different colors. It turns out that you do so much more loving if you're a pretty bird than you risk getting eaten (since birds can fly they're not bad at not getting eaten if they pay attention) that it's better to be pretty. Of course in some of these birds the females are dung brown and the guys are bright as gently caress. In others the females are bright too -- often these birds mate for life so attracting a good guy is a bigger deal to them than birds that just change 'em out every year.

proof of concept posted: