The Politics of Courtship

Since at least antiquity, animals have been used to illustrate the “natural” reasons for human behavior in both the economic and sexual spheres. Our own follies and foibles are thereby projected onto the animal world, where they lead a colorful if imaginary existence. The mythological view of the world may be dead in certain branches of theology today, but it is alive and well in ethology as any cursory glance through the male dominated literature on animal courtship will amply demonstrate. At least in the popular treatments, whenever courtship is described, politics isn’t far behind. For this reason, female animals as well as female humans are the objects of sexually tendentious observations.

A recent issue of Science magazine describes “femme fatale” fireflies who “lure” male members of different species to a culinary death by imitating the signals of the female members of those species. One can almost hear the Biblical injunctions ...