![\"Honest](\"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Stotting-gazelle.jpg\" "\\"Stotting-gazelle\\"")
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There is a term called “honest signalling<\/a>” in evolutionary biology. \u00a0It is not a new insight, but it is going to form basis for some of the key discussions we are going to have in the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Peacock’s tail is a wonderful example of a honest signal. \u00a0The luxury of the tail fathers correlates well with the fitness level of the animal which carries it. \u00a0A peacock with lower fitness can’t fake a luxurious tail feathers. \u00a0So, peahens have come to use the fitness of the tail feathers as a primary mate selection criteria.<\/p>\n Gazelles are known to stot (quadruple\u00a0jumping) in the presence of a predator. \u00a0By stotting, the gazelles \u00a0signal their fitness level to the predator (Hey, look, I am very fit. \u00a0 No use chasing me. \u00a0Find someone else easy). \u00a0As a weaker animal can’t stot as well as a fitter animal, stotting turns out to be a honest signal.<\/p>\n In humans, wealth indicators are easily understandable honest signals. \u00a0A Rolls Royce car is a honest signal of one’s financial resources. \u00a0Or, a Nobel prize is a reliable indicator of one’s mental resources. \u00a0Great skin, shining nails or lustrous hair is a honest signal of someone’s physical fitness. \u00a0But with humans, there is one ‘not so obvious’ fitness indicator: The Brain!<\/p>\n While a Nobel prize might be a reliable indicator of one’s cognitive resources (but then again, several Nobel prize winners had notoriously troubled family lives), brain itself is thought of as a honest signals of an individual’s genetic fitness. \u00a0In a wonderful book Mating Mind<\/a>\u00a0(which has cart load of politically incorrect assertions), Geoffrey Miller claims that the large humans brain evolved as a honest signals of genetic fitness.<\/p>\n No other animal has evolved large brain because large brain is a pain. \u00a0Consider these:<\/p>\n A large brain has loaded us with plenty of disadvantages. \u00a0There must have been some compelling evolutionary advantage that the large brain brought us. \u00a0Otherwise, evolution would have weeded it out.<\/p>\n If we think that the intelligence of a large brain gave us any survival advantage, you may \u00a0be wrong. \u00a0After all, till the\u00a0advent of agriculture, our life was hardly any different from that of any other animal on the planet. \u00a0We were not even the top predators on earth, even though we evolved our large brains some 200,000 years ago! \u00a0Why did we go through so much of trouble and evolve such large brain if it didn’t afford us any survival advantage?<\/p>\n Geoffrey Miller argues that a large brain evolved as a honest signal of the genetic fitness of the individual who carries it. \u00a0So, we have probably come to regard all ‘products of mind’ highly.<\/p>\n This has several interesting implications. \u00a0We will address them tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n