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What Is Sexual Selection? How Does It Work?
2. How Sexual Selection WorksAlthough some species do not reproduce sexually, most do. Members of species that reproduce sexually compete with each other to mate with individuals of the opposite sex. Individuals of both sexes vary in their attractiveness and availability as potential mates. This variability means some individuals are more successful than others in mating and procreating, and are thus “sexually selected” to pass on their genes. Those individuals that fail to mate do not pass on their genes.
Woody Allen’s observation that the world is an enormous, chaotic restaurant is bang on. All animals, including humans, survive and evolve by eating plants or other animals or both. Species evolve defences to keep from getting eaten. Other species evolve ways to get around those defences, which triggers the evolution of more elaborate defences, and so on—an evolutionary arms race. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson put it.