<p>As humans, we are rather proud of our ability to develop and learn new behaviours, seeing this as superior to the inheritance of behaviours that increasingly dominates the repertoires of animals with smaller brains.</p>
<p>While it is certainly this ability that underlies our extraordinary success as a species, the creation of such behaviours is relatively easy to explain, being comparable to the way in which capabilities can be trained in Artificial Neural Networks.</p>
<p>In this respect heritable behaviours, passed on through the generations rather than being independently developed within each individual, are far more difficult to explain.</p>
<p>In general, heritability is associated with genetics: the explicit information that is passed on from parent to child through the germ line. However, if we look at the information encoded in the genome it is exclusively constitutes instructions for creation of the polypeptide sequences from which cellular proteins are constructed.</p>
<p>While variations in proteins (e.g. neurotransmitters) could explain general characteristics of brain function, behaviours are the result of specific connection patterns laid down between neurons. The genome contains no instructions for determining which connections should be created, nor is there a mechanism by which such information could perform this function.</p>
<p>I can envisage how a human could learn how to knot a fishing net, but not how a spider knows how to perform the highly specific and complex actions required to spin a web.</p>
<p>How, then, is heritable behaviour created? If I search on Google Scholar for 'heritable behaviour' I only get research into which behaviours are heritable, not how.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-05T22:45:04.127Z
Looks like a duplicate of: [How are genetic behaviors expressed?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/28679/7001)
Arnon Weinberg
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-06T00:35:00.383Z
Can you actually cite a reputable reference indicating spinning a web by a spider is entirely inherited behavior without post-natal learning? I don't see much difference between your spider behavior and human's knotting a fishing net, at least a highly smart dog can hardly do so even after long time training. And spinning a web is an absolutely necessary activity for post-natal spiders to learn to survive, it could be very motivated to learn such activities efficiently and effectively in quite a short period of time as humans can achieve so similarly under same type of pressure.
cinch
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-06T15:58:44.020Z
@Arnon: This is, indeed, essentially the same question, though posed in a slightly different way. But I see that question also hasn't been answered (yet). I'm not sure how to deal with such duplicity on StackExchange. Can the two be linked? Or should the later post be deleted?
Daniel Boyd
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-06T17:54:22.687Z
They can be linked, yes.  I recommend upvoting that question (if you haven't already) to encourage answers.
Arnon Weinberg
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-06T19:11:32.260Z
@Mohottnad: There is no way that a new-born spider has the learning capacity to 'invent' web spinning from scratch. What's more, if this were the case we would not see offspring spinning the same webs as their parents but a multitude of different designs it is physically possible for a spider to build. Conversely, we do see different species spinning different webs. The way in which spiders spin webs must therefore have evolved through the generations through replication, variation and selection. The question is how the replication part of this works.
Daniel Boyd
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-07T04:30:40.443Z
Either "inventing" or "discovering" definitely involve post-natal trial-and-error type learning and exploration interacting with environment thus not entirely spontaneous/inherited, and through natural selection those fit for its environment would continue to survive and procreate. Dawkins described phenotypes that included all effects that a gene has on its surroundings, including other organisms, as an extended phenotype. Such expression of genes could be considered as "discovering" through active interaction with one's environment rather than "inventing" on one's own. (Continuing)
cinch
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-07T04:37:20.497Z
For Dawkins an organism such as a beaver modifies its environment by building a beaver dam; this can be considered an expression of its genes, just as its incisor teeth. Genes are, in Dawkins's view, selected by their phenotypic effects, not your conceived 1-way direction. The RNA world is the pre-cellular stage in the evolutionary history of life on earth in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated prior to proteins. The folded 3D structure of the first RNA molecule that possessed ribozyme activity promoting *replication* while avoiding destruction would have been the first phenotype
cinch
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-11-07T18:38:43.563Z
Dawkins holds a classical neo-Darwinian view in which, as you describe, genes are omnipotent. The problem with this view in this context is that the brain's connectome contains many orders of magnitude more information than the genome: therefore, the genome cannot fully determine it. That's like trying to build a car if you only have instructions on how to make nuts and bolts. Learning is indeed a partial solution: here, only a system capable of learning solutions needs to be created, not the solution itself. However, many neural functions are not learned but inherited. The question is: how?
Daniel Boyd
<behavior><neural-network><genetics><nature-nurture>
How can behaviour be heritable?
Daniel Boyd
# How can behaviour be heritable?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-11-05)

As humans, we are rather proud of our ability to develop and learn new behaviours, seeing this as superior to the inheritance of behaviours that increasingly dominates the repertoires of animals with smaller brains.

While it is certainly this ability that underlies our extraordinary success as a species, the creation of such behaviours is relatively easy to explain, being comparable to the way in which capabilities can be trained in Artificial Neural Networks.

In this respect heritable behaviours, passed on through the generations rather than being independently developed within each individual, are far more difficult to explain.

In general, heritability is associated with genetics: the explicit information that is passed on from parent to child through the germ line. However, if we look at the information encoded in the genome it is exclusively constitutes instructions for creation of the polypeptide sequences from which cellular proteins are constructed.

While variations in proteins (e.g. neurotransmitters) could explain general characteristics of brain function, behaviours are the result of specific connection patterns laid down between neurons. The genome contains no instructions for determining which connections should be created, nor is there a mechanism by which such information could perform this function.

I can envisage how a human could learn how to knot a fishing net, but not how a spider knows how to perform the highly specific and complex actions required to spin a web.

How, then, is heritable behaviour created? If I search on Google Scholar for 'heritable behaviour' I only get research into which behaviours are heritable, not how.

**Tags:** behavior, neural-network, genetics, nature-nurture

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Looks like a duplicate of: [How are genetic behaviors expressed?](https://psychology.stackexchange.com/q/28679/7001)  
> **username_2**: Can you actually cite a reputable reference indicating spinning a web by a spider is entirely inherited behavior without post-natal learning? I don't see much difference between your spider behavior and human's knotting a fishing net, at least a highly smart dog can hardly do so even after long time training. And spinning a web is an absolutely necessary activity for post-natal spiders to learn to survive, it could be very motivated to learn such activities efficiently and effectively in quite a short period of time as humans can achieve so similarly under same type of pressure.  
> **username_0**: @Arnon: This is, indeed, essentially the same question, though posed in a slightly different way. But I see that question also hasn't been answered (yet). I'm not sure how to deal with such duplicity on StackExchange. Can the two be linked? Or should the later post be deleted?  
> **username_1**: They can be linked, yes.  I recommend upvoting that question (if you haven't already) to encourage answers.  
> **username_0**: @Mohottnad: There is no way that a new-born spider has the learning capacity to 'invent' web spinning from scratch. What's more, if this were the case we would not see offspring spinning the same webs as their parents but a multitude of different designs it is physically possible for a spider to build. Conversely, we do see different species spinning different webs. The way in which spiders spin webs must therefore have evolved through the generations through replication, variation and selection. The question is how the replication part of this works.  
> **username_2**: Either "inventing" or "discovering" definitely involve post-natal trial-and-error type learning and exploration interacting with environment thus not entirely spontaneous/inherited, and through natural selection those fit for its environment would continue to survive and procreate. Dawkins described phenotypes that included all effects that a gene has on its surroundings, including other organisms, as an extended phenotype. Such expression of genes could be considered as "discovering" through active interaction with one's environment rather than "inventing" on one's own. (Continuing)  
> **username_2**: For Dawkins an organism such as a beaver modifies its environment by building a beaver dam; this can be considered an expression of its genes, just as its incisor teeth. Genes are, in Dawkins's view, selected by their phenotypic effects, not your conceived 1-way direction. The RNA world is the pre-cellular stage in the evolutionary history of life on earth in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated prior to proteins. The folded 3D structure of the first RNA molecule that possessed ribozyme activity promoting *replication* while avoiding destruction would have been the first phenotype  
> **username_0**: Dawkins holds a classical neo-Darwinian view in which, as you describe, genes are omnipotent. The problem with this view in this context is that the brain's connectome contains many orders of magnitude more information than the genome: therefore, the genome cannot fully determine it. That's like trying to build a car if you only have instructions on how to make nuts and bolts. Learning is indeed a partial solution: here, only a system capable of learning solutions needs to be created, not the solution itself. However, many neural functions are not learned but inherited. The question is: how?  

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## 0 answers

