Instinct - evolved or better answer?

Really? I thought his big idea was that failing to imagine a process is proof that goddidit by magic.It also seems to be yours.

Maybe you were dreaming. Otherwise you would have given name of that Oxford professor - or better link where the pundit states that the study of evolution of instincts was finished and there are no outstanding problems left, hehehe.Edited by MartinV, : No reason given.

What you're talking about? No, I don't. They arose by random mutation and natural selection.I don't see what's so perplexing about it. You're asserting that "Darwinists" are so perplexed that they see nothing wrong with the explanation. How does that make any sense?

Correct. It seems rather pointless to list thousands. So there is a food gene that determines in some manner what the worm should eat and when. Those worms have a gene that predisposes them even slightly towards eating those poisonous leaves when they are attacked by said parasite - would have an obvious advantage. Natural selection will take place and that gene (or suite of genes more likely) could end up getting rather refined. Chimpanzees differ from worms in that they have culture. That is - they pass on information. It could be that Chimps have an instinct to explore and investigate, and upon doing one chimp found itself feeling better after doing something, and it shared that information. Simply because the choice is not binary does not make it any different. In the temperature example it could be that there is a specific range of temperatures which are good. Thus we would have too hot, too cold and just right. The example still stands under this trinary example. Remember as well that it is no good to mushrooms that they are poisonous unless other animals are aware of that fact. As such, they generally evolve warning signals (red with white dots for example). Animals that are attracted to eating red and white dotted mushrooms don't survive quite so well as animals which find red and white dots alarming in a fungus.I'm no expert in the matter. However I would be keenly interested if any anti-evolutionists have an alternative.

I have given already an example of worms eating poisonous leaves after they are infected with parasites.I also wrote about instincts of wild mammals to avoid poisonous mushrooms and to eat only edible ones.Do you mean that such behaviour is caused by "random mutation" which provide an idea to the animal which plants/fungi are detrimental and only those with such ideas survived subsequently NS?Would it mean that mammals/worms possesed map (images) of all poisonous fungis/plants of the environment they live in? Of course if such instinct is innate such map could not have been created by learning. Because learning experience cannot be written into DNA of the next generation.So random mutation is responsible for creating ideas what mushrooms are edible to mammals and what plants have healing effects on worms. Only on such innate ideas NS could act upon.(Maybe some Darwinist could instead random mutation/natural selection nonsense apply Dawkins conception about memes - only those memes of smell of poisonous leaves/fungi survived. But these memes in animals arouse via random mutation of their DNA and are transerred vertically.)

I don't know if "slightly" in this case is correct. To eat such leaves they have to had the gene or not - tertium not datur. The leaves are poisonous - they do not feed them normaly.I see what you mean by refined instict anyway. On the other hand the case is probably the same as some cases of mimicry. There are butterfly mimics with "refined" resemblance to model. Yet the same species have sometimes polymorphic females - some refined mimics and some conspicuous. Both thrive well. The same for worms - only some of them have these instincts. Other do not have and thrive as well. Why should NS act so strongly only on these kind of worms? Maybe scientists should make an experiment to rear some group without older individuals. I would say if no learning and experience from older individuals occurs there must be an innate instinct which kind of tree has these healing effects. I consider it not normal to experiment eating cork under the bark - there must be at least some tendency to do it if intestine parasites are present. There are - I suppose - many kind of trees in forests where chimps live. Yet you consider one quality (or two, old Greek philosophical dispute ) - warm/cold. The examples I have given I am not sure we can reduce thet way. Reality of poisonous/edible or healing/detrimental cannot be probably reduced into one-two qualities. Poisoning (healing) are caused by many chemical compounds and I am not sure that some generalization of chemicals can be done - poisonous/not poisonous. I have read that red Amanita with white dots have toxical effects and are eaten and looked for by deers to have some kind of drunkeness. On the other hand most poisonous Amanita have green (cryptic?) cap. There is no connection between toxicity and poisonous character of mushrooms - I quoted scientific research on this elsewhere. I suppose the toxicity of mushrooms cannot be reduced to some simple quality of coloration or smell. Yet I suppose the mammals oriented predominantly by smell. What you probably propose there is some simple "rule of thumb" how to tell apart poisonous mushrooms from edible ones by smell. Maybe it is so simple and maybe not. The problem of instincts is interesting one because it has more to do with nerves, "psyche", so to say with spirit. In the time being it is question of belief if instincts can be explained via RM/NS only or something else play its role. My unscientifical guess is that there were once forces present that enabled learning to be "wired" into DNA. Evolution was once much more creative than nowadays. Now everything is so to say "frozen". I share opinion of Pierre Grasee and John Davison that creative driving forces of evolution do not take effect anymore.John Davison often propagate an idea that phylogeny is like ontogeny. Chance play no role in any of them. Both processes are predetermined, prescribed.

It sounds like you've answered the question, then: Sure. What's so perplexing about that?

I didn't say the worms only had the gene 'slightly'. I said that the gene only needed to slightly predispose the worms that have it towards eating the leaves. Not all organisms have to have certain advantageous genes to survive. It has been done for various things, but I don't know about this particular behaviour. And yet I stated that it was trinary not binary - and stated that it was not necessary that it was a simple instinct, only that it was easiest to explain in this medium. That's the position of 'Darwinists'. I was hoping your explanation would be different. A better word might be that things are for the most part in a sort of evolutionary equilibrium. This equilibrium is punctuated with with comparatively rapid moments of 'creativity' or 'change'. That'd be a quick and easy description of punctuated equilibrium. I was hoping for an anti-evolutionary explanation rather than a Darwinist explanation. The question I asked though - what is the explanation? Darwinists can explain how their proposed mechanism works, can you give a similar level of detail?

OK. Mutation of some gene slightly predisposed worms towards eating certain species of plants with leaves. There are many kind of leaves and smells anyway. Random mutation somehow predisposed worm to be susceptible (only when infected) to some chemical compound emanated from the given plant. There are many smells in forest from plants, animals, resin, mushrooms, pheromones etc... Probability that random mutation catch predisposition towards one smell in forest is negligible I would say. So if they have got them they survive but if they haven't got them they survive as well. The same for polymorphic mimic females of Papilio dardanus.
Obviously Natural selection is very benevolent in some cases. I suppose that inheritance of acquired traits is lamarckism, not darwinism. At least I have had on my mind such explanation.

Possibly - without knowing the full details of the evolution of this suite of genes neither of us is in a position to know. Since I don't know the name of this worm, I'm at a disadvantage here - if you want specifics dig up the name and I'll see what I can find. It could be the solution is much simpler - the presence of the parasite breaks down the aversion to poisonous leaves. If the parasite is essentially fatal - this kind of mutation would have little effect on the survivability of the worm unless some leaves are more deadly to the parasite than it. That's right - not all worms get infected with the parasite I assume? More information about the worm would help. I wouldn't say benevolent, I'd say that reality is oftentimes more complicated that simple illustrations. Not all members of a population have a beneficial allele from the outset - otherwise no evolution would take place. Clearly, these worms don't need the alleles to survive since you pointed out that worms exist that don't have them.If any of these particular worms gets the parasite, things don't look quite so benevolent anymore.I note with interest that you have yet to put forward an alternative mechanism (a better answer) for instinct.

Of course. Here is Zimmer's article he put into his book:

quote:

---

Sometimes parasitized animals change their diet. Some woolly bear caterpillars, for example, normally eat lupines. If attacked by parasitic flies that lay eggs in their bodies, they switch to a diet of poisonous hemlocks. The fly larvae still emerge from the caterpillar, but some chemical in the hemlocks helps the woolly bears stay alive, grow to adulthood, and ultimately metamorphose into Isabella moths. The caterpillars, in other words, have evolved a simple kind of medicine. Chimpanzees also, when infected with flukes and other kinds of worms, seek out plants with medicinal value, swallowing certain kinds of leaves whole and stripping the bark off other plants to get at the bitter pith inside. When studying these plants in the laboratory, scientists have discovered that they contain substances that are harmful to many parasites.

---

http://findarticles.com/...i_m1134/is_7_109/ai_65132195/pg_2 I have already mentioned John Davison's Manifesto or Prescribed evolutionary hypothesis which I consider as a very valuable antidarwinian source of thoughts.

Thank you. I guess that is why I couldn't find any info - they're caterpillars! Anyway, I don't see anything in there that drastically changes what I've said already - though it doesn't seem the hemlock harms the caterpillar or the parasitic wasps, which is interesting (I assume that the parasites want their hosts to live for a little while, so the parasites and the host share at least one goal which makes for some interesting evolutionary developments. Now it could be that the parasites themselves direct the caterpillar to eat the hemlocks, but I can't find much in the way of information on this specific scenario to judge it any better). Yes indeed. I am no 'expert' on the 'Manifesto', but from what I have read there is no observed mechanism proposed in it. Edited by Modulous, : parenthesis

It would mean that that parasites possess some magic spell - call it proteins - with which they force catepillar to eat hemlocks (btw. wouldn't have been Socrates poisoned by hemlock?). In medieval period some scientists believed - Giordano Bruno as most prominent example - that by some magic you can influence stars and planets. Now we laugh at such ideas. Yet an idea that complex of proteins that influence behaviour of caterpillars arose via random mutation of DNA parasites seems to be somehow perfect scientific explanation nowadays.

No. You're kinda looking at it backwards, IMHO.Random mutation in DNA caused that worms having such mutation and being infected to do various things, supposedly. All the worms that did something OTHER than eat the leaves died. This leaves us with only the worms that have the parasite AND eat the leaves.Make sense?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : spelling error

already coveredEdited by RAZD, : deleted

---

Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click)

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.