After writing about Kim Kardashian’s wonderfully stupid marriage last week, a nagging thought has been bothering me: why do we give a hoot about fame? Now, I’m sure you’re thinking "Screw the famous people" or something to that effect. I also doubt that Motherboard has much readership overlap with Us Weekly. But there’s something fascinating about the fact that a whole lot of people get very worked up about the personal lives of people they’ve never met.From an evolutionary standpoint, the desire to become famous is relatively easy to explain. Fame is usually accompanied with wealth and popularity, both of which are advantageous from a biological standpoint. Think about Beyonce’s $5,000 baby tub. Fame, riches and your perceived desirability are all valuable in one’s quest to find a high-quality mate and make great, successful babies. In our modern world, the famous are our royalty, often ensuring means and success for their offspring (Cameron Douglas notwithstanding).What’s much weirder is the obsession of fans. Sure, it’s understandable that actors, musicians, politicians and the like resonate with people who view them through their work. I admit I’d rather chat with Hendrix or De Niro than some random joker at a party. That’s an inherent part of human culture, and its rise isn’t exactly simple to explain.But what about the people who concern themselves with every little aspect of famous people’s personal lives, solely because they’re famous? Why the hell are those "Stars: They’re Just Like Us!" segments so popular? How could caring about Jennifer Love Hewitt’s sweatpants gaffe possibly offer me anything positive?Let’s look at this a little obliquely in animal terms. In the animal kingdom, there are plenty of examples of creatures copying each others’ style. In biological terms, it’s called mimicry, and it can prove to be extremely beneficial to one or both species involved.Rota and Wagner wrote an interesting paper covering moths and jumping spiders that was published in PLoS ONE in 2006. From the abstract:Here we report evidence for a case of predator mimicry in which metalmark moths in the genus _Brenthia_ mimic jumping spiders, one of their predators. In controlled trials, _Brenthia_ had higher survival rates than other similarly sized moths in the presence of jumping spiders and jumping spiders responded to _Brenthia_ with territorial displays, indicating that _Brenthia_ were sometimes mistaken for jumping spiders, and not recognized as prey.In other words, because the Brenthia moths looked similar to the spiders, they didn’t end up as spider food so much.A more pointed subtype of mimicry is Batesian mimicry (named for English naturalist Henry Walter Bates), in which one nonpoisonous species evolves to share traits—especially appearance—with a poisonous species. Batesian mimicry has been studied heavily in the butterfly world, with numerous species having similar appearances.It’s a multi-step evolutionary process. First, predators have to eventually recognize that a particular butterfly species is poisonous or otherwise unpalatable. Once those predators know to avoid that species, other species that look similar will also be avoided, albeit to a lesser degree. Over time, because predators avoid the poisonous model species, the nonpoisonous mimic species will survive most frequently, and their appearances will tend to converge.
It’s a big boon for the nonpoisonous species to be considered inedible because, in general, poisons and whatnot take a lot of energy to produce. At the very least, not being eaten just because of your appearance is a big advantage.Now take that model and, instead of worrying about getting eaten, think of it in terms of being rich and beautiful. Famous people tend to have lots of cash and attractive mates; perhaps, then, by studying People diligently, one can mimic that essence. Even think about it in simple terms of appearance: Famous folk prop up the fashion industry because a lot of us commoners figure that if we can look like them, we can be like them. But that begs one final nerdy question: If the model holds true, is fame poison?Follow Derek Mead on Twitter.
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Metalmark moths look like jumping spiders, right? Via.
Surprisingly, YouTube isn’t full of high-quality Brenthia videos. But doesn’t it kind of look like a spider?
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