Egg burier animals question

There is no such thing as "scientific explanation of this feature". All explanations are only fantasies and pressupostions. The better fantasy you have the better neodarwinian scientist you are (see Richard Dawkins).The great saltationist Goldschmidt was once arguing that he coudn't imagine gradual evolution of something. The aswer was that it is only due to lack of his imagination he didn't see it. Neodarwinism is very often only story invention which changes as soon as better story-teller pops up.I wouldn't be surprised if next to the M. maleo holes with eggs there would be nests of another bird species which do not bury their eggs. Birds species that do not profit "small survival advantages" of burrying their eggs. I suppose there are many bird species in the area which do not bury their eggs but thrive as well as M. maleo there.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

AdminNosy,here is the list of birds species which live in Sulawesi where
Macrocephalon maleo is endemic. It is pretty long list I would say. If somebody claims that Macrocephalon maleo bury their eggs because it gives them some survival advantage I would like to know how many Sulawesi species do the same. PaulK mentioned relative species without naming them.Such behaviour is not very common amongst birds and further study is needed before making rash conclusions.Thank you.http://www.bsc-eoc.org/avibase/checklist.jsp?lang=EN®i...

And perhaps it is you who do not realize into depth what you are talking about. Go to Mimicry thread we can discuss "survival advantage" and "fitness" there generally and in particular cases. That's more interesting as the reasoning of PaulK. Do you mean that genes for such behaviour were inherited from dinosurian ancestors and were somehow switched on? You know I like frontloading, epigenesis etc.. I suppose this is what you means. Otherwise if such genes has arisen de novo I wouldn't call such obviously innate and fixed behaviour as "throwback".

Do you think there was a time M.maleo ancestors nested and hatched their eggs like other birds and only their descendants (more recent M.maleo ancestors) started burrying their eggs?In that case - because the process seems to be instinctive - do they use some inherited and switched on ancestory genes?Scientists should also make an experiment what the birds would do having no possibilities to burrow their eggs into sand. Would they hatch them or would they leave their eggs on the ground and would not care about them?

OK. It contradicts clearly other theories proposed here. What is interesting is that validity of all these theories can be supported very well by different images of natural selection. I am afraid if anyone here proposed another theory of arising of egg burrying behaviour he would backs it up by some natural selection explanation as well.So we don't know how the behaviour has arisen. But what we know in advance is that it is "plain old TOE stuff" as jar has written it.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

Edited by MartinV, : misplaced postEdited by MartinV, : moved to EvC Forum: Mimicry: Please help me understand how