Jester Jester A jester, court jester, or fool, was historically an entertainer during the medieval and Renaissance eras who was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain him and his guests. A jester was also an itinerant performer who entertained common folk at fairs and markets. Jesters are also modern-day entertainers who resemble their historical counterparts. Jesters in medieval times are often thought to have worn brightly coloured clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern and their modern counterparts usually mimic this costume. Jesters entertained with a wide variety of skills: principal among
Court jester hypothesis species to mutually drive each other to adapt. There is dispute over how strongly evolution at the scale of speciation is driven by these competitions between species, and how much it is driven instead by abiotic factors like meteor strikes and climate change, but there was not an artful metaphor to capture this alternative until one was coined by Anthony Barnosky. The term "Court Jester hypothesis" was coined by Anthony Barnosky in 1999 in allusion to the Red Queen hypothesis. In a 2001 paper on the subject, Barnosky uses the term without citation, suggesting that he is the one who