We're not having class this week or next, so enjoy the break! I'll be updating today and next week with a blog post of fun facts.
Genes govern a lot of things, but they don't do everything.
For many years, science has believed animal behavior is almost entirely instinct, or set behaviors, but as we learn about genes, we learn that this is impossible. Imagine writing a book of behaviors for a person to cover every possible thing. Just telling a person what's good to eat would be the size of a dictionary. If you tried to write that in DNA, it wouldn't fit in the cell! It's much easier to write only a few short rules, like "eat sweet things", and rely on the creature to learn what food they should eat using the rule.
First, check out these animals stealing food!
In most of those images, the animals are looking at the other animal they're getting food from, suggesting they think the other animal has a mind like theirs that also desires food and might get mad they're taking the food. Meanwhile, some of the pet animals (especially the one in the first image) have no idea what's going on because they're not hungry, so they have trouble understanding the animal across from them wants food.
In other words: they're thinking about their behavior, not following a script!
Here we see a pair of squirrels who both think the stuffed animal is another squirrel. One cautiously tests to see if the fake squirrel will object to it having one of the nuts. The other assumes the fake squirrel will fight, so it attacks first.
All of this suggests animals have a very basic "theory of mind", which means they can think another animal has similar thoughts and feelings.
Humans are much, much better at this than anything else, but humans can also make mistakes with theory of mind.
Here, the human is offering a cake to the dog, but she also trained the dog to shake paws when someone puts their hand out. She made the mistake of thinking the dog would have the exact same mind as her and understands cake is not for shaking paws.
Join me next week for lots of weird stuff genetic mutation can do!
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