Evolutionary aesthetics

[2] Many animal and human traits have been argued to have evolved in order to enhance survival and reproductive success.

Humans are argued to have strong aesthetical preferences for landscapes which were good habitats in the ancestral environment.

The East African savanna is the ancestral environment in which much of human evolution is argued to have taken place.

There is also a preference for landscapes with water, with both open and wooded areas, with trees with branches at a suitable height for climbing and taking foods, with features encouraging exploration such as a path or river curving out of view, with seen or implied game animals, and with some clouds.

The authors argued that this similarity was in fact due to the influence of the Western calendar industry.

[1][3] Such evolutionary based preferences are not necessarily static but may vary depending on environmental cues.

Thus, availability of food influences which female body size is attractive which may have evolutionary reasons.

[5] Such features include particular male or female characteristics that have aesthetic appeal to the opposite sex.

He also considered that a similar process had occurred in humans leading, for example, to the evolution of female beauty and sweeter voice and, in males, to the beard.

One example is the emotion of disgust which has been argued to have evolved in order to avoid several harmful actions such as infectious diseases due to contact with spoiled foods, feces, and decaying bodies.