Abstract
IN his article on “Antelopes and their Recognition Marks” in the number of NATURE dated October 11, Mr. R. I. Pocock suggests that the darker colour of the males in certain species is the outcome or accompaniment of “male katabolism.” As generally used, this term seems to denote some peculiarity universally associated with the male sex and giving rise to male peculiarities, so that a character which is the outcome of male katabolism does not require to be explained by the theory of sexual or that of natural selection. This is the sense in which Geddes and Thomson use the term in their “Evolution of Sex”: “So brilliancy of colour, exuberance of hair and feathers, activity of scent glands, and even the development of weapons, are not and cannot be explained by sexual selection, but in origin and continued development are outcrops of a male as opposed to a female constitution.” But if male katabolism is always associated with the male sex, how is it that there are so many species in which there are no secondary differences between male and female, no outcrops of male katabolism? Either male katabolism, as something different from female katabolism, does not exist in the males of all species, or it sometimes exists without producing any visible effect.
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CUNNINGHAM, J. Secondary Sexual Characters. Nature 63, 29 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/063029a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/063029a0
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