Courtship in Animals
Many non-human animal species have mate-selection rituals also referred to as "courtship", anthropomorphically. Animal courtship may involve complicated dances or touching, vocalizations, or displays of beauty or fighting prowess. Most animal courtship occurs out of sight of humans, so it is often the least documented of animal behaviors. One animal whose courtship rituals are well studied is the bower bird, whose male builds a "bower" of collected objects.
From the scientific point of view, courtship in the animal kingdom is the process in which the different species select their partners for reproduction purposes. Generally speaking, the male initiates the courtship and the female chooses to either mate or reject the male based on his "performance".
One sociobiological model is The Selfish Gene, proposed by Richard Dawkins: That an individual of a species will mate with individuals from the same species displaying "good genes". Courtship, then, is a display of "genes" carried by an organism looking forward to mix with the genes of another organism to preserve themselves and their genes onto the next generation.
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Famous quotes containing the words courtship and/or animals:
“Reverence to a woman in courtship is less to be dispensed with, as, generally, there is but little of it shown afterwards.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)