Interestingly enough, (or maybe not-so-interestingly...) there is
evidence to
suggest that
humans actually aren't the only
species that seeks out
aesthetically pleasing stuff to
gaze on.
Jane Goodall's
primate research, for instance, documented incidents of groups of adult
chimpanzees waking up their little chimp babies and walking out into
clearings, then holding them in their laps at the
crack of dawn while they sat still in a little chimp-mob and stared at the sunrise. Asking the chimps what the hell they were doing, of course, wouldn't've been terribly
productive, so I suppose there is no
absolute proof that they just wanted to watch the sun come up and share the
beauty of it with their little ones, but none of the naturalists on Goodall's team in Gombe could discern any group-protecting benefit to the
behavior.
Male Australian bowerbirds (family paradisaeidae) have the especially daunting task of being "architechts for aesthetics" when it comes to mating season. Rather than primping and preening their bright tailfeathers or making a big fuss with their mating calls, these boys have to decorate their bachelor pads with arched entryways made of vines and branches, and shiny, brightly colored trinkets they'd been able to find or steal from ... well ... from wherever. The females choose their mates based solely on the looks of their bowers. Only the boys with the prettiest digs get the girls.