The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in the field of comparative psychology and his impact on academic psychology was muted, partly because of the widespread influence of the behaviourist school during the twentieth century. The lavish style of biological illustration was followed in work on animal locomotion by photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904)(leading to cinematography), and by the Scottish naturalist James Bell Pettigrew (1832–1908); in the extensively (and controversially) illustrated works of the evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel; and – to a lesser extent – in D'Arcy Thompson's "On Growth and Form" (1917). Darwin's ideas were followed up in William James' "What Is An Emotion ?" (1884); and,
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex to the forces of sexual selection. While debates on the subject continues, in January 1871 Darwin started on another book, using left over material on emotional expressions, which became "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals". In recent years controversy also involved the peacock tail, the most famous symbol of the principle of sexual selection. A seven-year Japanese study of free-ranging peafowl came to the conclusion that female peafowl do not select mates merely on the basis of their trains. Mariko Takahashi found no evidence that peahens expressed any preference for peacocks with more elaborate trains, such as