Practice question · True or false
Under the handicap principle, the very costliness of a peacock's tail is what makes it a trustworthy signal of the male's quality.
Hints
- Ask what stops a low-quality male from faking the signal.
- Only a genuinely high-quality male can bear the real cost.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Cost is exactly what enforces honesty: a low-quality male cannot sustain the expense of a huge tail, so only high-quality males display it, making the costly signal trustworthy. Cheap signals, by contrast, anyone could fake.
Practise Communication and Ritualization
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