Greater Prairie Chicken in full display

The Prairie Chickens, a kind of open land grouse that is now endangered, dance their ancient dance at this time of year. Something stirs in their blood and makes the males gather in a group just before dawn on a little rise in the rolling prairie. They spread their tails, erect the long feathers on the back of their heads, drop their wings, puff up the colored sacks on their necks, stamp their feet, strut, cluck, and make an odd sound like someone blowing across the top of a coke bottle. "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! I am the best Prairie Chicken!". The females pretend to ignore the males from nearby in the grass.

Flamenco dancer in full display

I watched their display until the sun was well up. As I drove back into town to find a birdwatcher's breakfast (eggs over easy), I flicked on the radio and punched up a classical music station playing the Chopin Preludes for piano. I began to wonder what stirred in Chopin's blood that made him display so elaborately, and it occurred to me that a great variety of human behavior can be seen as display: Flamenco dancing, delivering a talk at a scientific symposium, playing ice hockey, squealing auto tires at a stop sign. Certainly humans are very complex and there are many motivations for all of these behaviors, but I think they can also be seen as elaborations on a basic instinct to strut one's stuff.

A friend of mine told me that he once visited a remote village in northern Quebec, far from any road. In the evening, the men of the village would gather together on a wooden bridge and clog dance to a fiddler's tune. Then, under the soft glow of the tundra night, they would go to trysts with the women. If you are a male, the payoff for a good display is the same whether you are a human or a bird: it attracts the chicks.