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Definition
The Handicap Principle suggests that many aspects of animal morphology, behavior, and communication are best understood as handicaps. A handicap reliably advertises an animal’s quality because it signals that the organism is of sufficient quality to tolerate the burden the handicap places on it. Central to this principle is the idea that the costliness of the handicap ensures the reliability of the message being conveyed.
Introduction
Upon spotting African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), Thomson’s gazelles (Gazella thomsoni) will sometimes start stotting– repeatedly leaping up and down using all four legs. Instead of fleeing to safety, these gazelles call attention to themselves, squandering valuable time and energy. Why do they engage in such an ostensibly dangerous behavior, and how could it possibly be favored by natural selection? The answer lies in the handicap principle – one of the oddest and most counterintuitive theories in...
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References
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Al-Shawaf, L., Lewis, D.M.G. (2018). The Handicap Principle. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2100-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2100-1
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