Extravagant display was a problem for Darwin, who realized it could make individuals vulnerable to predation, until he realized that it actually supported his t

Extravagant display was a problem for Darwin, who realized it could make individuals vulnerable to predation, until he realized that it actually supported his theory, as it is the sort of thing that could arise where selection matters, and harder to justify as the work of an omniscient creator. Current theory often explains such displays as hard-to-fake signals of health and general fitness, but I do not know if this idea originated with Darwin. The size of male ostrocod genitalia is a different matter, as (I assume) it is not about display, but about emphasizing reproduction at a possible cost to the survival part of the strategy. Dead-end strategies are not a threat to Darwinian evolution, as it only optimizes for the short term, and are harder to justify as the work of an intelligent creator.