Those stories remind me of when I was a kid around eight or nine years old and I brought in my hognose snake into the house. My mother was on the telephone with her friend and saw me with the snake, and said very matter-of-factly "get that thing out of here". I can still hear her voice, which included no fear, but a non-negotiable instruction to keep the snake out of the house. So, I kept Dennis, the snake, in the garage and did not advertise him too much to my mom afterwards, and everything was fine. Another time I was working in the garage and saw a mockingbird attacking a dog by flying and pecking at the dog's tail right out on the street in front of the house, and I told my mother what I had seen. She threatened to spank me for lying, and I dropped the bird/dog story (which was very true) and I still kept the snake. I think the lesson in all of this may have been not to be overly communicative with my mother, but she died of cancer when I was eleven years old and I continue to cherish all those old memories ...
Stan Moore San Geronimo, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From: Wirt Atmar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: [email protected] >Subject: Re: Reptiles & learned behavior >Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 13:28:08 EDT >Received: from listserv.umd.edu ([128.8.10.60]) by >bay0-mc2-f19.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2444); Fri, >29 Sep 2006 10:54:30 -0700 >Received: from listserv.umd.edu (IDENT:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >[128.8.10.60])by listserv.umd.edu (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id >k8TBBSbX029318;Fri, 29 Sep 2006 13:54:28 -0400 (EDT) >X-Message-Info: txF49lGdW42npzONL8Awk17MnQUdBHLSZ7kDbCRT09U= >X-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Precedence: list >List-Help: <http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?LIST=ECOLOG-L>, ><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ECOLOG-L> >List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >List-Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >List-Owner: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >List-Archive: <http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?LIST=ECOLOG-L> >Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >X-OriginalArrivalTime: 29 Sep 2006 17:54:30.0390 (UTC) >FILETIME=[50345160:01C6E3F0] > >Patricia writes: > > > I have experiences teaching children about reptiles, and I think the >fear > > factor is largely learned, but sometimes for good reasons. A while back >I > > had a classroom of 6th graders in my zoo educational building at the >Bronx > > Zoo. I brought in a python, and all the kids got excited, until they >heard > > the chaperon mother shriek at it and they all copied her. It was a sad > > lesson. > >It's also the most natural of reactions. > >Every bit of evidence indicates that we and the other primates have a deep >instinctual fear of snakes, but oddly enough, the evidence also indicates >that >the expression of that fear has to be first socially triggered by having a >member of the troop (or a chaperon mother) first shriek at the sight of the >snake, >making the fear of snakes the oddest of reactions, passed generation to >generation partly within the content of the lineage's germline DNA and >partly >outside genetic inheritance, through social learning. > >What follows below are a few comments Matt Ridley had on the subject: > >======================================= > >The classic and best experiment in this is Susan Mineka's work with a group >of monkeys in Madison in the '80s, where she set out to examine the >ontogeny of >an instinct â in this care fear of snakes. Wild-born monkeys are afraid >of >snakes. They're so scared of snakes that they will cower in the back of the >cage >screaming rather than reach across a plastic model snake to get at a peanut >when they're very hungry. Captive-born monkeys are not afraid of snakes; >they >happily reach across the model snake to get at a peanut. > >So what's going on here? That means that fear of snakes must be learned. >But >how on earth do you learn fear of snakes? The conventional classical >conditioning wouldn't work very well, would it, because either you have a >bad >experience with a snake to learn from, in which case you're dead, or you >don't have a >bad experience, in which case you don't learn that snakes are frightening. >So >how are you going to end up acquiring a fear of snakes? > >It seems an absurd thing to acquire. She argues that what's happening is >that >there is a program for fear of snakes, an instinct if you like, but that >that >instinct needs to be socially triggered â in some sense triggered by a >vicarious experience, by observing another monkey having a fear of snakes. > >So she set up an experiment in which she videotaped the wild-born monkey >reacting with fear to a snake, and she then showed this video to a >captive-born >monkey, which immediately acquired a fear of snakes and was not then >prepared to >reach across even a model snake to get a peanut. > >She now doctors the video, so that it has the same monkey reacting in the >same way in the background, but the bottom half of the screen now instead >of >having a snake has a flower. Again, the captive-born monkey has never seen >a >flower, so after it sees a monkey reacting with extreme fear to this new >thing >called a flower it should just as easily learn a fear of flowers. > >But it doesn't. It just learns that some monkeys are crazy. So what's going >on here is that there is clearly an instinct for fear of snakes, and that's >not >surprising. Human beings have snake phobia. It's the commonest of all the >phobias, even though most of us hardly even ever see a snake in our lives, >but it >requires an input from the environment. It requires a nurture input to be >triggered. > >We know this is happening in the amygdala, and we're getting a bit of a >handle on which cells are involved. We're not yet down to the gene level, >but I'd >bet my bottom dollar there's going to be a little pathway of genes in here >that's mediating this process. > > -- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ridley03/ridley_p5.html > >======================================== > >Wirt Atmar
