An antilope “learning” to walk and run within minutes of being born.
A baby turtle seeking the waters.
A hatchlings outcry for food.
How is behavior like that hardcoding into the DNA/Brain?
And could this basic innert learning be preprogrammed to do other things? – A babys human recognize a smile or laugther. Could thies patern recognition abillities be tweaked to teach a fetus the alphabet before being born as an example?
In: Biology
Don’t think of it as genetic “memory.” Nothing is being remembered.
Rather, the creatures with the genes that lead to these behaviors survive to pass on their genes to offspring.
This is a gross oversimplification, but go with it:
* A genetic mutation occurs in a baby bird.
* This mutant baby bird cries for food, while its brothers and sisters don’t.
* The mutant bird gets the food, and the other birds die.
* The mutant bird passes its genes onto offspring.
* These offspring also have the “cry for food” mutation.
* Millions of years later, all the birds cry for food.
* None of these birds, nor their genes, “remember” the original mutant bird. They’re just the birds with the “cry for food” genes.
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