Monday, March 30, 2015

What characteristics are inherited in fish, but learned in humans?

This is a surprisingly difficult question. It's not always clear whether a given behavior is innate or learned in any species, and humans are the species for which this is most difficult, because we are so spectacularly good at learning new behaviors.Still, I think it's largely accurate to say that swimming is an important behavior which is largely innate among fish but largely learned among humans. Fish start swimming as soon as they are...

This is a surprisingly difficult question. It's not always clear whether a given behavior is innate or learned in any species, and humans are the species for which this is most difficult, because we are so spectacularly good at learning new behaviors.

Still, I think it's largely accurate to say that swimming is an important behavior which is largely innate among fish but largely learned among humans.

Fish start swimming as soon as they are born, and show no particular improvements in swimming performance as they grow, suggesting that this is a genetically-programmed behavior.

Humans can float from birth and have the mammalian diving reflex (which is clearly genetic), and there is some genetic variation in human swimming (I'll never swim like Michael Phelps, no matter what I do---he just has better swimming genes than I do), but we generally make terrible swimmers until we have gone through days or weeks of training and practice. Also, we can see humans dramatically improve their performance as they practice. These features suggest that swimming in humans is a learned behavior.

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