| My first HTML attempt Hope it works |  | ||
| Re: Man and animals or just animals? -- cyanidefreak | Post Reply |  |
Forum |
|
Posted by: cyanidefreak 08/08/2008, 14:03:03  (About author)
Edit |
On a genetic component of spirituality in style="font-style: italic;">Homo sapiens sapiens http://www.cyanidefreak.bravehost.com/Sociobio1.jpg Part 1. Establishing Some Science Stuff: Environmental and genetic components of behavior, proximate and ultimate causes. One of the prominent and influential people in biology is a guy named E.O. Wilson. While he didn't exactly invent Sociobiology he certainly made it a real scientific field. He said that behavior has heritable genetic and external components. If he's right, behavior is a product of both genes and environment, or nature and nurture. Example: If you live in the South, watch some cows some time. When they hear biting flies they will generally flilck their tail and ripple theit skin (a trick I would really like to be able to do) stamp their feet and maybe rub their asses on a tree. When they hear a warble fly or some other parasitc fly they will go nuts - kicking and bellering and generally running amok. Biting flies hurt when they bite and parasitic flies don't. Why do they behave so differently? If we apply Wilson's concept to this situation we could postulate that there is a gene in the cow's genome that has been passed down generation after generation and that response to the warble fly sound is a response that allows cows to pass on that behavioral gene. The genetic component in the behavior is the part has been passed down in the gametes of the cows and the environmental component is the warble fly. The bites of biting flies are painful and can lead to infection if the cow's immune system is compromised but for the most part biting flies do not lead to death. The warble flies on the other hand painlessly lay eggs in the cow's body tissues. The larvae that emerge can cause severe traumas and death as they grow and burrow through the cow's organs and tissues. The evolutionary advantage of the behavior is the common one - survival. But that can't be the reason the cow reacts that way. The cow doesn't know the biology of the warble fly. There's something else at work. Actually I am style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Assuming the cow doesn't know the biology of the warble fly. I confess I have no knowledge of the extent of biological education among bovines. Let's also establish that I do not know exactly what genes are involved in the cow's behavior but for the sake of simplicity when I refer to a behavior gene I am talking about a genetic component of a behavior. That componenet most likely will affect homonal or neurotransmitter responses to stimuli but it might do something else but in the end, if that genetic component is removed or altered, the behavior will be absent or altered. The sound of the fly is an environmental component of the behavior. The biting flies make sounds just as much as the warble fly but the specific sound the warble fly makes initiates the products of the genetic component and the cow exhibits the behavior. Or to be more explicit when the cow hears the warble fly she has a shit fit. There's several documented ways to analyze behavior using Wilson's principles. I will approach my ultimate quest using proximate versus ultimate analysis. By proximate analysis I mean the warble fly sound, the hormones or neurotransmitters - things that directly contribute to that poor cow's shit fit. Ultimate analysis of the cow's behavior with respect to he warble fly sound reveals things like the consequences warble fly parasitism and how they effect the survival of the cow's genes. Questions about individual development of a behavior, direct stimuli that elicit a behavior, the physiology, genetic and anatomical features of a behavior are questions about proximate causes. Questions about the evolutionary history, fitness and advantage of a behavior are questions about ultimate causes. Only by understanding both proximate and ultimate causes of a behavior can there be complete picture of the behavior. One of the oldest and stupidest arguments in the history of science (and I'm not being me, scientists really do consider it an old and stupid argument) is whether behavior is the product of nurture or nature - genes or environment. That argument evolved was exacerbated with the publication of Darwin's famous book. Those that rejected evolution generally recognized a discontinuity between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Modern biologists do not recognize that discontinuity. They have formulated a compromise where behavior has both genetic and environmental components in all animals. Furthermore they recognize that all phenotypes derive from the interaction between environmental factors and genetic factors and behavior is as good a phenotype as any other. With that established, it is accepted that the contribution of genes and environment to any phenotype is never zero. A graphic representation of this is present in the figure I am attempting to include: In this figure we see that on one end insect behavior is mostly influenced by genotype and mammal behavior is mostly influenced by environment. Note that in not case is there a component with zero contributions. Anybody want to argue with any of this? Reference: Most of this crap came from E.O. Wilson's epic work, style="text-decoration: underline;">Sociobiology. Some of it came form Biology: Concepts and Connections 5th ed by Campbell, Reece, Taylor and Simon. Some of it came out of my own experience. |
| Post Reply | Email Friend | Alert |
|
Previous | Next | Current page |
|