Like why aren’t lions total roid monsters if only the strongest male gets to breed the females?
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Okay that’s a first for me. I have an answer to that, I have the name for that… but not in English.
I found the wikipedia article explaining the notion in full details, but that’s a French page (Baguette represent: bonjour!), and apparently no English version of this page exists.
Wow, a first O_o
Anyway. What you describe is an actual “black spot” of evolution, something that sometimes happens. Sexual competition leading males into evolutionary dead ends after a few millions of years. It’s when females have exclusive control over which male partner they may choose, and unfortunately, the males end up trapped in a contest in which the #1 criteria is counter-productive for them individually, but not counter-productive enough in the very short term.
The best example of all time is the Megaloceros Giganteus, a giant elk who lived across Europe and went extinct half a million years ago (it’s like yesterday), they had badass giant XXXXXL antlers. So huge they had great difficulty surviving with them above their head.
The French name is “hypertélie”, the French wikipedia page is “caractère hypertélique”: [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caract%C3%A8re_hypert%C3%A9lique](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caract%C3%A8re_hypert%C3%A9lique)
I’ll let you throw it into google translate.
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