[Taxacom] "Enculturalization" in apes, dogs, and birds

[Curtis Clark]

On 2011-02-11 07:48, Richard Jensen wrote:
> Curtis,
>
> How does any species-specific behavior evolve?  If there is any genetic
> link to a behavior that increases the likelihood of
> survival/reproduction, then that link should become more frequent and
> may eventually go to fixation, carrying the associated behavior with
> it.  Web-building in spiders? Dance communication in bees?
Well, duh. An evolutionary biologist will want to separate inherited 
from learned behavior, selection from enculturation. There are a lot of 
interesting avenues of research on the issue of interpreting human 
pointing that *don't* involve hand-waving. IMO, citing the length of 
time a species has been domesticated, absent any real evidence one way 
or the other about the behavior at issue, is hand-waving.