At 19:29 29/05/01 -0400, you wrote: cut to ---> > True imitation is extremely rare in animals other than humans, except >for birdsong and dolphin > vocalisation, suggesting that they can have few or no memes. I'm not so sure about this. I once kept fantail doves. I'd built a dovecote next to my garden pond (a rather elegant dovecote if I might say so). One day a young dove, barely able to fly, fluttered down and fell into the pond. Although to my mind he was obviously in some distress, two other young doves thought this great fun and dived in as well. It was a veritable Armada of doves striking out vigorously for the opposite shore. Needless to say, they were all in danger of drowning almost immediately and I had to assist them out. I told a biologist about this once and he didn't believe me. Keith H P.S. Mind you, my garden pond was a cut above the ordinary. I'd stocked it up with fish, frogs, newts -- all acquired (surreptiously one dark evening) from the lake at Warwick University. The doves' parents, however, had come from a rather dubious establishment in Birmingham with no intellectual distinction, but maybe during conception the offspring had acquired memes by some sort of osmotic process from their aquatic neighbours. ___________________________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
