I tweeted about this one day and am not sure how original of a thought it is… Haven’t heard about it in any science classes yet, but I also don’t study evolution as a major… But I have heard questions posed as to things like, how does a bird just know how to make a nest? Why do turtles when they are born automatically know to make a run for the water?
There only seems so many logical possibilities… one would be that we can pass on memories to our offspring, another that perhaps all animals are guided by some spiritual guidance, or my personal favorite is that animals and beings are born with certain mental paths that allow us to interpret the environment a certain way.
I think even ideas and mental paths can be evolved into animals and ourselves. That many animals are essentially little computers with so many primary functions. That each species evolved to interpret the environment certain ways, to look at certain objects and come to the same ideas about them.
We as humans are much more removed from this and rely on enculturation to survive, but we still all do certain things the same in certain regards to interpreting our environment… we put things into categories, we use schemes… if you study psychology you will find they’re our many ways we all tend to interpret the environment in the same ways.
It really seems the most logical thought, I don’t know how else a bird just comes into this world knowing how to make a nest or know that certain things are food and others not, among many other things that animals naturally do.
It is certainly a bit mind blowing to think that mental paths and ideas can be formed through evolution like that. Makes us all into biological computers a little bit, but it also allows us to think the way we do, otherwise we would be even more of a mental mess than we already are.
I still wonder if there isn’t some spiritual guidance in animals though… I still can’t wrap my head around how a bird can fly halfway across the country and find the same pond every year, unless of course they have like a super intelligence in that regard. But to not even miss flying one way or another by a degree is pretty nuts, especially taking in nights and weather conditions... seems something else is at play… maybe not though…
Some interesting thoughts though…
theeclecticschizophrenic.com 