Competition among males is often expressed in the form of elaborate weapons made of bone, horn or chitin.
From about 1500 bce bronze was gradually introduced, but the use of stone implements continued; Norway had few riches to barter for bronze goods, and the few finds consist mostly of elaborate weapons and brooches that only chieftains could afford.
"The most elaborate weapons rarely inflict real damage to opponents, but these structures are very effective at revealing even subtle differences among males in their size, status or physical condition," Dr. Emlen writes in the current Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.
The Tower Magazine recently reported that Iranian scientists were present during North Korea's 2013 nuclear test and North Korean scientists had trained Iran on computer technology relating to these elaborate weapons systems in 2011.
Throughout evolution, these microbes and their hosts have been fighting never ending arms races in which the microbes deploy ever more elaborate weapons, while the hosts adapt to defend themselves.
But it is the tick's invisible armamentarium, dozens of elaborate chemical weapons in its saliva, that have become the prime focus of Dr. Wikel, an entomologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center, which sits on a hilltop near Hartford overlooking wooded suburban yards that are prime tick habitat.
In St. Remi, Quebec last week, yet another teen clown was charged with assault with a weapon after allegedly attacking someone though, when reached by VICE, Quebec provincial police did not elaborate what weapon he possessed.
Craftwork was executed in copper, shell, stone, wood, and clay and in such forms as elaborate headdresses, ritual weapons, sculptured tobacco pipes, effigy pottery, effigies, and masks of wood or copper-jacketed wood.
The ceasefire line has been ritualised, and the hall in the hamlet of Panmunjon where the two sides can meet for negotiations is surrounded by an elaborate protocol about weapons: the hills on each side are full of tanks and artillery but none are allowed in the valley.
Neither is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treand (NPT), and both employ their nuclear weapons in elaborate games of peek-a-boo with the international community.
The space in "David and Goliath," an edge-to-edge scrum of fighting soldiers, is created with the overlapping forms of men, horses and weapons, and elaborated by minute details like the changing armor patterns.
