Darwin Day photo contest
The musuem and department are celebrating Darwin Day this weekend and early next week. Darwin was born on February 12th (as was Abraham Lincoln). Conveniently, he published Origin of the Species when he was 50, so we get to celebrate nice even numbers of his birthday and the publication of the Origin simultaneously. I am sure this will be ground into your memory come next year, the 200th anniversary of Darwin birth, and the 150th anniversary of the book.
Anyway, someone decided to organize a photo contest for the festivities this year. For once I had something artsy and sciencey and I dreamt up something Darwiny to say about it. Here’s the pic and my blurb about it:
This is a photo of a male mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) from the San Francisco Zoo, taken in November 2007. Mandrills exhibit strong sexual dimorphism, and the bright facial coloration and larger body size in males is thought to be the result of sexual selection. Darwin originated the concept of sexual selection, and in his 1871 book he uses many examples of sexual dimorphism in primates to build his case.
But when it comes to evolution, many people are still as cognitively trapped as this mandrill is by his cage, comfortable and natural though it might seem. Some people look at primates and think that shared ancestry is a slur on mankind. But no fact changes an ever-present identity, and wonderment is not diluted when extended to facts at all scales of time and space. As Darwin so famously concluded, "There is grandeur in this view of life, . . . ; from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
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