Interesting article in Science

[MamaRoo]

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Actually I wasn't implying it at all, and neither is the article. I thought it would be interesting to chicken folk because of the frequent assertion that a mean roo (or hen) makes mean babies. I thought people might be interested to consider the meanness as a learned behavior rather than an inherited one. I have no idea how it went immediately to child abuse. (and subsequently off into the stratosphere

)

 

[AquaEyes]

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Very interesting....Trying to attach human actions to birds, or trying to draw conclusions of human actions from the actions of birds, sounds like mixing up the two disciplines.
[No it doesn't.]

Government seems to be tied to the social end of things, far more than plain old physical knowledge. [No it doesn't.] In the Global Warming scam and scandal [There is no scandal.], they have tried to use information acquired from physical science to force the hand of social science. [No they didn't. You're wrong.]

What is even worse, is the fact that the physical science gladly jumped into bed with the social science [No they didn't, you're wrong], all of it funded by the government [Nope, not all funded by the government.].....No conflicts of interest there.

Sorry, but I couldn't help but tackle this one. I figured, since evidence seems to be optional in this discussion, I'd play the game of arguing without it. Wow, it's so much easier! I should have thought of this YEARS ago!

 

[DuckLady]

Let's make sure we are civilly debating and not being inflammatory.
From the rules
6. No Fighting. Taking a personal conflict to the forum is unacceptable. "I'm right, you're wrong" threads and posts will be edited or deleted.

 

[MamaRoo]

soo....back to science...

If anyone has done the experiment of hand raising a chick who's parents were mean and nasty, I'd love to hear how it turned out.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

MamaRoo, that would be awesomely interesting. But even more interesting to me personally if they made a strain and environment where variables were limited! I wonder if that has been done within a laboratory setting? I think untangling the amount genetics (rather clearly illustrated in the studies with foxes and rats where aggressive and docile lines were bred separately) and environment dictates behavior will be a really exciting journey indeed, and have great applications in agricultural sciences.

I didn't even consider that avenue.

 

[AquaEyes]

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Hmmm...I don't have an experiment to reference that EXACTLY fits your question, but I do recall an interesting story I remember from Behavior Genetics about the origin of the difference between a "docile" and an "aggressive" strain of mouse (or maybe it was a rat...it's been a bit since I read the information...so this is kinda off the top of my head, but I can find some references if anyone wants to read further).

OK, so these were just two strains that had observable and measurable differences in general temperament -- the "docile" line and the "aggressive" line. Btw, these were not the only lines displaying these traits, but were just two that happened ti be one way or the other. Well, it wasn't until someone decided to try cross-fostering babies between lines, and transferring fertilized eggs from one line into the other, that it was realized that the behavioral differences weren't genetic, but were the result of early contact between mother and babies. The mothers who groomed their babies more frequently raised babies that were more calm. The babies that didn't receive the frequent calming effect from being groomed by their moms tended to be anxious and aggressive, and these traits persisted into adulthood. When these babies themselves had litters, their anxious and aggressive behavior was related to them not grooming their own babies much, thus the cycle continued. Conversely, babies from the "aggressive" strain raised by "docile" mothers were not nearly as aggressive, and were basically as docile as the "docile" strain. Early behavior by mother upon babies became a stimulus which affected the neural development of the babies in a way that persisted into their maturation. Yes, there is "learned" behavior, but behavior "learned" during early development can be set in the brain and not easily be "unlearned."

Another experiment on docility versus aggression that focused on the genetic forces of the behavior was carried out by Dmitri Belyaev on silver foxes bred on fur farms. He used basic selective-breeding techniques -- set criteria, and rigorous culling -- to begin three lines. The first was a control that underwent no selection. The second was one in which animals were graded on how docile they were with a series of tests, and only the few percent with top scores of each generation were bred. The third line was selected for aggression. After a few generations, the divergence between the docile and aggressive lines was remarkable. Because the rearing environment was kept as controlled as possible, he was able to reduce the effect of rearing pattern on adult behavior. Later, cross-fostering and swapping fertilized eggs between docile and aggressive strains did nothing to change the behavior of the foxes from their genetics -- aggressive-strain foxes raised by docile-strain foxes, even when transferred as fertilized eggs, still became aggressive.

So what do these contrasting studies say? Observed behavior cannot be determined to be more genetic or more learned just by looking at the surface, and rarely is a behavior all one or the other. Behaviors which confer an evolutionary advantage can be passed on by learning or by genes -- culture is thus subject to evolutionary change.

Another thing to bring up regarding behavioral studies is the set of four questions posed for understanding behavior, by Nikolaas Tinbergen. Each question seeks to understand the behavior from a different perspective. They are broken down like this:

1) What causes the behavior? (i.e., the set-up of stimulus --> perception --> process information --> response...explaining pieces of the behavior-machine and how they work, so to speak)
2) How does it develop? (i.e., how does the organism acquire the behavior -- is it inborn, or is it learned? If learned, what are the steps involved in learning the behavior?)

These first two are called proximate questions, because basically they are asking questions about the behavior as it is exhibited in the organism in front of you.

3) How does it function to confer an evolutionary advantage? In other words, what about engaging in the behavior increases the reproductive fitness of individuals exhibiting the behavior over individuals NOT exhibiting the behavior?
4) How did the behavior evolve? In other words, how is the behavior represented among living related species, and how does the behavior differ among species either less-related or from another family tree?

The last two are called ultimate questions, because basically they are asking questions about how the behavior came to be in a species (or group of species) over the course of evolutionary history.


Using these four questions, what could we investigate further with regards to the study in the original post?

 

[AquaEyes]

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Dang....you mentioned foxes and rats, and beat me to posting.....

 

[MamaRoo]

Within the fox study, didn't coat color/patterning also travel with docility? I remember that being the most fascinating part to me.

With regard to the four questions, and our chickens

, the first two seem pretty easy to set up in a back yard laboratory, but the second two might be difficult. Maybe someone who has wild chickens in the neighborhood could do observational, and if they were really clever they could steal an egg or two...

 

[AquaEyes]

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[punk-a-doodle]

Within the fox study, didn't coat color/patterning also travel with docility?

Not only that, but also flopped over ears, which have long been associated with domesticated animals. Really neat stuff.

Yes, that led to an interesting study of the biology of behavior -- how differences in neurotransmitter levels and changes in pigmentation can be different effects attached to the same cause -- basically, the genes make proteins that are involved in several chains of reactions that overlap, and changes in one gene (or its expression) can have multiple effects down the line. This is called pleiotropy.

Huh, I totally did not know there was a term for that, or rather, what the term was. I've got to take a more in-depth look at those studies, because, to be honest, I was mainly just browsing at the time for possible pet purposes.

Fascinating studies Aqua. I'm going to have to search for those, especially the rats being raised by docile or aggressive foster parents. I don't remember that one, and was citing a different study....wonder if it was the same PI, just expanding upon what they found?​