Arms And The Beetle And Baboon Poem by gershon hepner

Arms and the beetle I have sung,
of the beetle rolling dung,
and the one that’s like an Arab
terrorist and called a scarab.
From the horns that they display
competing males all turn away
without a fight. How very clever
of beetles not to use the lever,
and cause competitors to cower,
by mere displayal of their power,
without recourse to violence.
To me this makes a lot of sense,
as to baboons who widely yawn
to show their teeth, but save their brawn
to mate with females who’re impressed
by other features, like their chest
from which the sound of loud wahoos
emerge to prove that they’re yahoos,
not readers of mere yahoo e-mails,
but bait for all ungoogled females,
as primates prove to be by yawning
and calling wahoos every morning,
and afternoon and evening too,
when feeling ready for a few
more rolls upon the forest floor
with prime-time females they adore,
and who adore them not for teeth
but for the weapon in no sheath
they flaunt without a beg-your-pardon
to all the world, the horny hard-on,
that proves, far more than wahoo wails,
that these baboons are alpha males.

Baboons as well as beetles I
have sung, and now I’ll tell you why.
I don’t have horns to prove I can
perform as well as any man,
but I have poetry whom rhymes
are useful to me all those times
I’m looking for a female who
appreciates them, ready to
declare to me that I’m the one
whose mind gives her the greatest fun,
poetically with a potential
for what, when horny, is essential

Inspired by an article by Nicholas Wade about weaponry in the animal world (“The Extravagant Result of Nature’s Arms Race, ” March 24,2009) :

Nature is reputed to be red in tooth and claw, but many arms races across the animal kingdom are characterized by restraint rather than
Competition among males is often expressed in the form of elaborate weapons made of bone, horn or chitin. The weapons often start off small and then, under the pressure of competition, may evolve to attain gigantic proportions. The Irish elk, now extinct, had antlers with a span of 12 feet. The drawback of this magnificent adornment, though, was that the poor beast had to carry more than 80 pounds of bone on its head. In a new review of sexual selection, a special form of natural selection that leads to outlandish armament and decoration, Douglas J. Emlen, a biologist at the University of Montana, has assembled ideas on the evolutionary forces that have made animal weapons so diverse. Sexual selection was Darwin’s solution to a problem posed by the cumbersome weapons sported by many species, and the baroque ornaments developed by others. They seemed positive handicaps in the struggle for survival, and therefore contrary to his theory of natural selection. To account for these extravagances, Darwin proposed that both armaments and ornaments must have been shaped by competition for mates. In his view, the evolution of the armaments was driven by the struggle between males for females, whereas the ornaments arose from the choice, largely by females, of characteristics they prized in males. Modern biologists have devoted considerable attention to female choice and how it has led to such a riotous profusion of animal high fashion, from the plumage of birds to the colors of butterflies. Less attention has been paid to the equally rich diversity of animal weaponry….
Dr. Emlen noticed a tendency for weapons to start out small, like mere bumps of bone, and then to evolve to more ornate form. The small weapons are actually quite destructive since their only role is to attack other males. But the more baroque weapons, even though they look more fearsome, seem to cause lesser loss of life. The reason is that the more menacing weapons have often acquired a signaling role. Instead of risking their lives in mortal combat, males can assess each other’s strengths by sizing up a rival’s weapons, and decline combat if they seem outclassed. The ornate weapons also lend themselves to ritualized combat in which males may lock horns and assess each other’s strength without wounding each other. “The most elaborate weapons rarely inflict real damage to opponents, but these structures are very effective at revealing even subtle differences among males in their size, status or physical condition, ” Dr. Emlen writes in the current Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.
Since the weapons still have to be used from time to time, they are realistic signals of a male’s fitness. This information is of greatest interest to females, which are always looking for true, unfakeable signals of a male’s quality. Geerat Vermeij, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Davis, and an expert on the arms race between mollusks and their predators, said he agreed with Dr. Emlen that weapons began as soon as there was something to be defended. But Dr. Vermeij said he was “skeptical of the conclusion that initially harmful weapons turn into display weapons.” Crabs, for instance, lose claws a quarter of the time in combat, he said….
How much of this theory of male weaponry applies to a group not included in Dr. Emlen’s survey, that of primates, in particular humans? People have pathetically puny teeth and claws compared with the armaments of other dominant species. This is a sign not of pacific intent but of the fact that they manufacture their weapons. The manufactured weapons, just like biological ones, have assumed a display function — think of the fearsome appearance of samurai helmets or armored knights, or the menacing tanks and rockets that paraded through Red Square in Moscow in the days of the Soviet Union. Male primates of other species often use displays in competing with one another, and the displays “do seem to resolve disputes without actual physical violence, ” said Robert Seyfarth, an expert on primate behavior at the University of Pennsylvania. Especially among baboons, the displays often take the form of yawns, which provide males the opportunity to exhibit their impressive canine teeth. Another display used by baboons to intimidate rivals is their “wahoo” call, which can be heard over several kilometers and is one of the loudest given by any terrestrial mammal….
Dr. Emlen’s interest is not in how his evolutionary rules of weaponry might apply to people, but in why weaponry among animals is so diverse, from the gigantic horns of the rhinoceros beetle to the macelike tail of the ankylosaur and the saws on sawfish. His answer is that a variety of evolutionary processes drive the evolution of weapons, from competition between males to display functions and the general rapidity of sexual selection. The moral of the tale, at least for animals, is that a weevil that starts an arms race may end up with descendants armed like a rhinoceros beetle.


3/25/09