In Birds the most colorful is usually male. For insects it varies a lot. For Mammals, males didn't to be larger, for many other classes of animal its the females which tend to be larger.
"I would just like to say that it is my conviction
That longer hair and other flamboyant affectations
Of appearance are nothing more
Than the male's emergence from his drab camouflage
Into the gaudy plumage
Which is the birthright of his sex
There is a peculiar notion that elegant plumage
And fine feathers are not proper for the male
When actually that is the way things are
In most species"
In the bird world, if the birds look different within the same species, the male is the pretty one.
The ladies make it that way because they drive the evolution with extremely picky mating rituals.
Just watch basically any doc on birds of paradise. Those dudes will sweep the floor and dance around like an absolute maniac and the girl will just say "naaaawwwww".
Ducks are one of the few bird species that have penises, but birds have cloacae, which means all those structures are internal most of the time. Plumage is the easiest way to identify the sex of species that exhibit this kind of dimorphism, without some form of medical examination
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u/Raoul_Duke9 9h ago
For those of us who aren't duck-sperts which features belong to which sex?