When I was a doctoral student back in the early 1990s, one of the coolest ideas in animal behavior involved the idea that individuals observed and copied the mate choice decisions of others. The study of mate choice was stuck in an unproductive rut, obsessing over what information sexual signals conveyed and whether mate choice could evolve via indirect selection. The idea that animals might copy one another’s choices came from left field, opening up the possibility that mating preferences might become culturally transmitted, evolving via nongenetic pathways (Kirkpatrick and Dugatkin 1994).

中文翻译：

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模仿游戏：Davies等人的评论。

在1990年代初期，我还是一名博士生时，动物行为中最酷的想法之一就是人们观察并复制他人的择偶决定的想法。伴侣选择的研究陷入了徒劳的局面，沉迷于传递性信息的信息以及伴侣选择是否可以通过间接选择而发展。动物可能复制别人的选择的想法来自左领域，这打开了交配偏好可能通过非遗传途径进化的文化传承可能性（Kirkpatrick and Dugatkin 1994）。