body modification

[wolram]

why do people whant to modify thier bodies? and where do they
get the ideas?
a few i can rember, a tribe whoes women stretched thier
necks with rings.
another i think both genders that stretch the bottom lip
by inserting a wood stretcher into it.
the list goes on and it seems no part of the body has
escaped attention.

[nautica]

How about peacocks with the huge tail feathers, the Drosopholia H with a large wide hammer head, the mallard duck with a green head???

Simple, sexual selection.

Nautica

[Kerrie]

body modifications such as these examples are no different then people who get tatoos or piercings...to them it's a form of art...

[nautica]

Originally posted by Kerrie
body modifications such as these examples are no different then people who get tatoos or piercings...to them it's a form of art...

Art, which was originated and elaborated upon, due to sexual selection.

Nautica

[wolram]

but where do they get the ideas from? why is having
a long neck, huge bottom lip sexy.
i have tattoos when i had them it was considered
macho not sexy

[Kerrie]

Originally posted by nautica
Art, which was originated and elaborated upon, due to sexual selection.

Nautica

yes, due to sexual selection to a degree, however, it's our love of art that helps set us above just the basic animalistic instinct of gaining a sexual partner...perhaps nautica, you speak for yourself and not everyone...

by the way, it that your sexy self adorned with a tatoo in your avatar?

[nautica]

Yes, that is me and no I do not speak of myself. I only speak of how these art forms started - not how they are elaborated upon today, due to our love of art.

Even in nature we do not completely understand sexual selection, but we do know that it does exist.

Nautica

[Another God]

Chinese foot binding started because it was deemed sexy to have small feet. It started off as a simple observation on behalf of some prince I think, and, just as in the case of an evolutionary arms race, the females start trying to out compete each other, trying to get smaller and smaller feet.

Chances are, most forms of tribal and cultural extreme body modification started like this.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by wolram
but where do they get the ideas from? why is having
a long neck, huge bottom lip sexy.


I agree with Another God's post, and it reminds me of Richard Dawkin's "memes" (from the book, The Selfish Gene), which are the main subjects of cultural evolution, just as genes are the subjects of organic evolution.

As to wolram's question:

i have tattoos when i had them it was considered
macho not sexy


And don't you think that it's in our genes for (most) females to consider the "macho" male sexy? That's the result of sexual selection, obviously, since for females to be attracted to the alpha male leads to stronger and stronger blood-lines.

[selfAdjoint]

It's almost like a quantum fluctuation creating the universe. Some accidental slight preference of long ago gets amplified by the positive feedback loop of sexual selection.