Quote:
Originally Posted by snas
The really curious thing to me is instinct. How does a dog who has never seen a snake seem to instinctively know that snakes are dangerous and either to be avoided or attacked and killed? How can information like this be inherited?  |
Evolution by natural selection !
Those earlier forebears of dogs who
did not possess the instinct for running from snakes, became extinct themselves .. didn't reproduce … end of that line of genetically inherited traits !
How the original forebears possessed the instinct to run in the first place, may have been:
(i) a result of them being bitten once but not dying. They learned from the experience, (which may be even more primitive than the run away instinct), and passed it onto their offspring by example, or;
(ii) the original run away instinct was a mutation in the original forebears' genes, (and so was purely genetic), and thus was onpassed to the offspring.
?
Cheers