From: rokimoto557@gmail.com   
      
   On 8/26/2025 7:45 AM, Ernest Major wrote:   
   > On 26/08/2025 09:36, Martin Harran wrote:   
   >> All animals seem to be born with some level of innate knowledge;  a   
   >> newborn mammalian child knows how to suckle its mother's teat; a   
   >> newborn pup knows to yelp to attract its mother's attention; a   
   >> squirrel knows to store nuts for the winter.   
   >>   
   >> It seems obvious that such knowledge is stored within our DNA but has   
   >> research into the human genome come up with anything at all to   
   >> indicate where or how it is actually stored?   
   >>   
   >   
   > To restate the well-known, a recipe is a better analogy for a genome   
   > than a blueprint. Looking for a specific location ("where") in the   
   > genome for the encoding of behaviour is a mistake.   
   >   
   > The general answer is that organisation of the nervous is controlled by   
   > the interaction of various parts of the genome (and to various degrees   
   > the environment), and in some cases behaviours are inherent in that   
   > organisation.   
   >   
   > For humans this is nigh on impossible to answer because of the   
   > complexity of the system. You can ask simpler questions, such as   
   > behaviour in Caenorhabditis elegans, which has a small number of neurons   
   > with deterministic development, or how the processing of sensory data is   
   > controlled by the genome. At the extreme you could look at chemotaxis in   
   > bacteria, where one can look at how the interaction of a G protein   
   > coupled receptor with a small molecule sets of a chain of protein   
   > interactions that result in physical movement of the bacterium.   
   >   
   > I don't seen any obvious reason why things would be different in single-   
   > celled eukaryotes, though one might reasonably expect larger repertoires   
   > and greater sophistication of behaviour. Moving to multicellular   
   > organisms intercellular signalling adds another layer of complexity, and   
   > in animals there's an additional layer of neuronal signalling.   
   >   
   > But perhaps I overstate the difficulty in asking questions about humans.   
   > The patellar reflex is found in a number of mammals including humans. A   
   > relative short chain of neurons connects the sensory input to the reflex   
   > motor movement, reducing the question to how is that arrangement of   
   > neurons represented in the genome. A somewhat more complicated system is   
   > represented by the diving reflex.   
   >   
   There was just a thread on consciousness.  Consciousness seems to be the   
   ability to remember the cause of the physical stimuli that evoked the   
   behavioral response.  Consciousness allows us to learn from physical   
   stimuli and develop behaviors.  Innate behaviors are literally knee jerk   
   reactions to the environment.  Touching a newborn babies cheek and it   
   will turn to suckle, and stroking the bottom of a newborn's feet to   
   watch them curl (grasping reflex, likely, from when ancestral arboreal   
   newborns had grasping feet).  If a baby doesn't perform these behaviors   
   at birth there is usually something neurologically wrong.  Something is   
   messed up between the stimuli and the neurological signalling that is   
   required to perform the behavior.   
      
   Innate behaviors are just automatic responses to environmental stimuli,   
   and there isn't any one gene involved in these behaviors.  We have   
   taste, smell, feel, hearing and sight, and we have innate behaviors that   
   have survival value at unexpected sensory input.  Something could be   
   looking for you or jumping at you.  Just like E. coli some of these   
   senses use G protein coupled receptors to send signals due to   
   environmental input, and we have sensory neurons.   
      
   One thing that I have wanted to try to look at is brooding behavior in   
   birds.  You can hatch a female chick in isolation, but that chick will   
   still be able to nest, incubate, and brood a batch of chicks.  When   
   mature and the days start to lengthen in Spring a hen will start   
   nesting.  Chickens do not make elaborate nests, just depressions covered   
   with crude nesting material and some feathers, under some type of cover.   
     They start laying an egg a day, but only go back to the nest to lay.   
   Something in the hen's brain counts the number of eggs, and when the   
   number is enough laying stops and incubation begins.  The embryos start   
   further development once incubation begins so the eggs all hatch around   
   the same time.  You can keep a wild-type hen laying more than 80 eggs by   
   just taking away the eggs as they are laid.  Otherwise she will start   
   incubating when she has around 8 eggs in the nest.  A hen will turn the   
   eggs every 15 to 20 minutes.  She dips her head under her body and rolls   
   a few eggs each time.  She doesn't turn all the eggs every time, and   
   automated incubators turn the eggs every 1 to 2 hours, and when I got my   
   first incubator I was able to get decent hatches by just turning the   
   eggs 3 times a day (when I woke up, after I got home from school, and   
   before I went to bed).  If birds do not turn the eggs the embryos can   
   get attached to the inner membrane and be damaged if the eggs are   
   disturbed (mound nesters do not turn their eggs, but incubate like   
   alligators and turtles so the eggs remain undisturbed in the same   
      
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