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sexy son hypothesis

sexy son hypothesis noun: the hypothesis, in evolutionary biology, that a female animal's optimal choice among potential mates is a male whose genes will produce male offspring with the best chance of reproductive success, irrespective of the mate's capacity as a caregiver or any other direct benefits he can offer.

Noun

sexy son hypothesis

  1. (evolutionary theory) The hypothesis, in evolutionary biology, that a female animal's optimal choice among potential mates is a male whose genes will produce male offspring with the best chance of reproductive success, irrespective of the mate's capacity as a caregiver or any other direct benefits he can offer.
    • Enter the sexy son hypothesis, which says that the peahen was selected to prefer fancy-plumed peacocks because this would increase the chances that her male offspring would inherit a comparably impressive tail and would therefore be especially attractive to the next generation of peahens.2012, David P. Barash, Homo Mysterious, Oxford University Press, →ISBN

Origin of sexy son hypothesis

Coined by P. J. Weatherhead and R. J. Robertson in a paper published in The American Naturalist (1979).

Questions about sexy son hypothesis

What does sexy son hypothesis mean?
Sexy son hypothesis means the hypothesis, in evolutionary biology, that a female animal's optimal choice among potential mates is a male whose genes will produce male offspring with the best chance of reproductive success, irrespective of the mate's capacity as a caregiver or any other direct benefits he can offer.
What part of speech is sexy son hypothesis?
Sexy son hypothesis is a noun.

Words near sexy son hypothesis in the dictionary

  1. sexy baby voice
  2. sexy baby voices
  3. sexy prime
  4. sexy primes
  5. sexy shrimp
  6. sexy son hypothesis
  7. sexy time
  8. sexy times
  9. sexy up
  10. sexy-like
  11. sexyer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sexy son hypothesis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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