Darwin Day 2015 Questions: #6 How does learned behavior evolve into inherited instinct?
Richard Dawkins answers your questions about evolution in honor of Darwin Day 2015. “How does learned behavior evolve into inherited instinct?” Edited by Stephanie Renee Guttormson Copyright...
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(Music playing) Richard Dawkins: "How does learned behavior evolve into inherited instinct?" Well that's a very advanced question because it wouldn't occur to many people that that is what happens, but there is a very interesting theory about how that happens and why it happens. It's called the Baldwin effect. In the Baldwin effect, the idea is that an animal learns, for example, some skill. A good example might be thrushes, which smash the shells of snails and then eat them. And the closely related blackbirds don't do this. If you give a blackbird a snail that's been taken out of its shell, it's very happy to eat it, but a blackbird hasn't the faintest idea how to smash a snail, whereas thrushes do it all th...
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(Music playing) Richard Dawkins: "How does learned behavior evolve into inherited instinct?" Well that's a very advanced question because it wouldn't occur to many people that that is what happens, but there is a very interesting theory about how that happens and why it happens. It's called the Baldwin effect. In the Baldwin effect, the idea is that an animal learns, for example, some skill. A good example might be thrushes, which smash the shells of snails and then eat them. And the closely related blackbirds don't do this. If you give a blackbird a snail that's been taken out of its shell, it's very happy to eat it, but a blackbird hasn't the faintest idea how to smash a snail, whereas thrushes do it all th...
