[ExI] evolutionary puzzle

[Dylan Distasio]

Symmetry is another tell for good genes and attractive in potential mates.

Another example of preprogrammed behaviors can be found in birds.  Mother
turkeys are great moms as long as their babies chirp.  If a non-chirping
baby is born, they will generally peck them to death as the chirping is a
tell for a healthy baby.

In robins, males will attack just the right shade of red feathers when it
is presented to them.  They don't even need a whole stuffed bird to be
triggered.

There are likely a large number of heuristic short cuts programmed into all
animals including us, but most of ours are probably psychological at this
point.



On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 4:30 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 12:43 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>>  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.)
>>
>> ​
> The lifetime of all animals is temporary. For several hours after an
> animal has been sprayed by a skunk its going to be visually blind, have no
> sense of smell and is going to be stumbling around distracted by pain;
> during that time its going to be more vulnerable to predators.
> ​ ​
> I don't know exactly how much that will decrease it's chances of passing
> along its
> ​ ​
> genes
> ​ ​
> into the next generation but it would certainly be greater than zero and
> over thousands of generations it would add up, animals that didn't like the
> look of skunks would have an advantage over animals that had no such
> aversion.
>
> Of course this couldn't work if a predator didn't have a quick and easy
> way to tell a skunk from a squirrel or some other small harmless animal,
> and that's why
> ​the​
>  skunk evolved its distinctive white stripe. That's also why extremely
> poisonous small frogs and insects have super bright day-glow colors, but
> its a constant arms race, some species don't bother making the poison and
> would be good to eat but they mimic the bright coloration of the poisonous
> animal, so that animal must evolve a even more conspicuous marker.
> ​
>
> It
> ​ ​
> reminds me a bit of sexual selection. Why do male peacocks have such a
> ridiculously large tail when a cumbersome thing
> ​like that makes them very poor flyers and ​
> must greatly reduce
> ​their​
>  chances of having a long life? Because female peacocks like large tails.
> ​Why do females like long tails? Because to
> mate with the healthiest males
> ​ they needed a marker that could quickly let them tell a healthy male
> from a unhealthy one, and long ago Evolution must have decided large tails
> were a pretty good rule of thumb for that. But Evolution is not perfect and
> things can get out of hand.
>
> In the population there is going to be genes for producing tails of
> various sizes and genes for liking tails of various sizes​
> ​,​
> birds with midsize tail
> ​s​
> would make the best flyers and have the longest life but from peacock's
> genes point of view this was obviously not the most important
> consideration. So females who have genes for liking the long
> ​est​
> tails would mate with males with genes for making the longest tails
> producing offspring that have both types of genes. This will lead to a
> disastrous positive feedback loop ending only when the advantage of
> superior flight performance
> ​and longer life ​
> of birds with midsize
> ​tails ​
> outweighs the greater difficulty
> ​ in​
> finding a mate.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
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