Sorry if this is slightly off topic but I must recommend this bird book I just finished. It does have a few Kenyan / African examples but the majority of the research is in the Neotropics.
'The Evolotion of Beauty, How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us'
The book is written by Richard Prum who is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University.
The focus of the majority of the book is on sexual selection among birds that Mr. Prum has studied, namely manakins but also bowerbirds and others. The last chapters of the book are filled with excellent cocktail party fodder as the focus moves to sexual selection in humans.
I can not recommend this book enough - the best natural history book i"ve read in many years, a real game-changer. You can begin to appreciate how the whims of female birds have shaped so much of what we too find beautiful. You might also appreciate how the sexual choices of female humans may have shaped a less violent, less sexually dimorphic and more social human world.
Cheers,
--
James Christian
Karisia Walking Safaris