The 'Lek' of Birds Gathering Similar Males: Is it a Strategy Targeting Females' Decision Paralysis?

The story that a phenomenon where having too many options actually makes it harder to choose can be observed in animals was introduced on the YouTube channel 'Choe Jae-cheon's Amazon'. In the video, in response to a question about people experiencing decision paralysis when choosing a romantic partner, Choe Jae-chun replied that it is a "happy dilemma" and shared his own marriage story. He mentioned that during his study abroad years in the United States, there were about twenty male Korean students, but only one female, meaning he was someone who broke through a 20-to-1 competition. He noted that many people struggle when there are too many options, suggesting this is similar for everyone.

'Choice Overload' Confirmed Through Tree Frog Experiments

The research he introduced is the result of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee on tree frogs. The subjects are tree frogs that live very commonly in the eastern United States. The researchers recorded the sounds made by each frog separately, placed one female frog in a room, and played the sounds of two male frogs from the left and right sides. They judged which sound the female preferred by observing which side she moved toward. Through this study, it was observed in the laboratory that when several similar sounds are heard at once, it takes the female a long time to choose, and in some cases, they almost give up on choosing altogether.

This phenomenon, where having too many options makes it harder to choose, is called "choice overload" in English and "selection excess phenomenon" (seontaek gwada hyeonsang) in Korean. He evaluated the research as an interesting study that can be sufficiently applied to humans, as they funnily discovered that effect through the frog experiment.

The 'Lek' of Birds Gathering Similar Males

He also brought up a paper he has not yet published. He said that while he was pursuing his doctorate at Harvard University and studying insects, he became fascinated by the breeding behavior of birds due to a class discussion and researched it for about half a year. He shared that he wondered why several shoe stores were clustered together in an alley in downtown Boston and sought out Nobel laureates in economics, but could not get an answer. Upon being told to look in the basement, he spent several months searching through hundreds of economics books in an economics library in a building's basement.

What he wanted to know was the breeding behavior of birds called a lek. First, males fly into a breeding ground, engage in physical combat, and secure small territories. A day or two later, when females arrive in groups over the hills, the males begin to perform dances to express how attractive they are. The females wander around, mate with the male they like best, and then fly away to lay eggs and raise them alone. While it is common for male birds to participate in rearing, the males of this species do not participate in rearing at all.

The conclusion of evolutionary biologists is that females watch the males' dances to judge whose genes are the best in order to choose the highest quality genes. However, he views the lek as a strategy that makes it difficult for females to decide. He suggests that when similar males gather together, the expectation that even a mediocre male might get a chance due to the female's decision paralysis can act as a factor. According to some research, male birds move between various leks in the early season, and when the males' weights were measured at the end of the season, the males within one lek were all quite similar. He compared it to how an unremarkable man cannot enter an excessively high-quality club, so males participate in leks where they feel they have a chance of winning.

He explained that the reason tailor shops were clustered in Gwanggyo between Euljiro and Cheonggyecheon Stream in Seoul in the past is in the same context. The fact that every customer says only the tailor shop they visit is good means that, ultimately, it is difficult to compare, and that is why they can be clustered together. His joke that there is no reason to go to a "single spot" where bachelors in the United States gather to have a drink and look at each other after work along with Won Bin and Hyun Bin is based on the same explanation.

Judging Genes via Phenotype, Life-Threatening Courtship

He explained that what females want to analyze is the genotype, but what they can actually see is the phenotype. Since they must infer the excellence of the genotype through the phenotype, male courtship behaviors have evolved, and females have come to use abilities such as singing or dancing as criteria for selection. As a result, an enormous evolutionary competition among males was inevitable, and some males appeared who try to seduce females by cheating in all sorts of ways, even if their genes are mediocre. He added, however, that the rate of truly excellent males succeeding is much higher than that of cheating males succeeding. He predicted that because there are so many options, many females are bound to make mistakes, and perhaps that is why diverse genes are left to the next generation.

Courtship can also threaten lives. The frog he cited is a species where females prefer males that draw out the end of their sounds for a long time. To draw out the end of a sound, one must have a good physique and stamina. Males that can continue the trailing sound for two, three, or four times are chosen by females, but there is a critical weakness. Bats cannot hear the beginning part of the sound well, but they hear the long trailing sound at the end, descend, and eat that male. To seduce a female, one must prolong the sound, but by prolonging it, one's life becomes endangered.

He divided the way humans choose partners into two types. One is an algorithm that analyzes everything to find the best option, and the other is a method called "heuristics" in English. He calls heuristics "eoreumbeop" (approximation method) in his own translation, referring to a method where, because analyzing everything makes judgment too difficult, one excludes everything else and makes a decision based on just one factor, such as appearance. He explained that approximation methods do not just appear, but are decisions made through a long process where, in most cases, it won't go terribly wrong even if decided that way, and sometimes they are decisions made based on one's own experience.