Animal Traditions Behavioural Inheritance in Evolution [Paperback]

Offers a unified evolutionary and developmental perspective of animal behaviour, beyond the 'selfish gene'.Animal Traditions introduces the behavioural inheritance system into existing evolutionary theory, offering new interpretations of behaviours such as adoption, maternal behaviour and helping. Describing the variety and importance in evolution of the cultural traditions of birds and mammals, it shows how our understanding of behavioural evolution is enriched by considering how the system of passing on information from one generation to the next works. Although firmly set within the Darwinian framework, it offers alternatives to both the 'selfish gene' and 'meme' views of the world for all evolutionary biologists.Animal Traditions introduces the behavioural inheritance system into existing evolutionary theory, offering new interpretations of behaviours such as adoption, maternal behaviour and helping. Describing the variety and importance in evolution of the cultural traditions of birds and mammals, it shows how our understanding of behavioural evolution is enriched by considering how the system of passing on information from one generation to the next works. Although firmly set within the Darwinian framework, it offers alternatives to both the 'selfish gene' and 'meme' views of the world for all evolutionary biologists.Despite its almost universal acclaim, the authors contend that evolutionary explanations must take into account the well-established fact that in mammals and birds, the transfer of learned information is both ubiquitous and indispensable. Animal Traditions maintains the assumption that selection of genes supplies both a sufficient explanation of evolution and a true description of its course. The introduction of the behavioral inheritance system into the Darwinian explanatory scheme enables the authors to offer new interpretations for common behaviors such as maternal behaviors, behavioral conflicts within families, adoption, and helping. This alãf