[ExI] evolutionary puzzle

[spike]

Two of the most overlooked qualities in life are patience and wisdom:



 

This is something I have wondered about for a long time.  Most dogs seem to have an intuition that a skunk is something you just jump at every opportunity to not mess with.  A squirrel is pretty similar in size and shape.  Dogs go nuts when they see those guys, even black ones.  Now I hafta wonder if visuals have anything to do with it.  If we caught a big black squirrel and dyed a big white stripe on him, would the dogs back off?  Regarding instinct, the skunk also seems to know he has nothing to worry about from the dogs.  Every time I see a skunk in the neighborhood, he tends to carry himself like he owns the place.

 

Alternative suggestion: the skunk scent is undetectable if he doesn’t spray.  You can be within about three paces of it and not smell a thing.  Perhaps the dog can?

 

Another puzzle: how would the instinct to not mess with the skunk get encoded into the genes?  The skunk’s non-lethal defense would not seriously impact the unwise dog’s reproductive capacity (temporary delay only.)  We can easily imagine a learned behavior of don’t mess with the skunk, but most dogs have never been sprayed, and still know better.

 

I had Dobermans in my misspent youth.  They would take on anything, including rattlesnakes (very carefully and always successfully.)  Clearly they had instinct with regard to those guys, the kind which is explainable.  But there were plenty of skunks out there, and never once did any of them get sprayed or even bark at a skunk.  Very puzzling.

 

Ideas?

 

spike

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20171008/3ffa6862/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 170205 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20171008/3ffa6862/attachment.png>