Enjoying the podcast. Darwin said, “The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” You mentioned that it's a signal of fitness which is the prevailing view and the neo-Darwinian view. But in addition to natural selection (fitness), there is sexual selection and the thesis here would be that, for instance, the female peacock just really digs the colorful, long tail and that's the mate she wants. Just capricious choice based on beauty. So you have these unwieldy feathers which is the price the males pay if they want to be selected by a female. It has nothing to do with fitness, according to sexual selection theory.
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