Wednesday, March 5, 2014

IMITATION

"Through imitation, the juveniles [jackdaws] learn basic survival skills, such as how to travel safely through their home range. To his surprise, Lorenz discovered that the birds follow traditional routes that are passed from one generation to the next. Thus, when he set a hatch of hand-raised chicks together with an experienced adult, the young jackdaws quickly adopted the flight ways of their mentor. Indeed, they took the older bird's pathways so exactly that they continued to avoid parts of the garden where the family cat liked to hunt. Yet, the cat had died long before these youngsters hatched."

Candace Savage
Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays
Sierra Club Books  1995
p. 56

If someone were to so "exactly" follow our pathways, where they might end up?

Just Thinking,
Lonnie

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