Re: reading a book

From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 28 Apr 2005 - 09:53:11 GMT

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    Hi.

    > As a matter of interest, I have had milk bottles delivered to my
    > doorstep all my life, and never to my knowledge had any vandalized by
    > birds of any description. I have moved around the UK *a lot*. But my
    > mother-in-law (in the North East of England) always leaves an empty can
    > out for the milk-lady to pop over the top of her milk bottles, since
    > otherwise she is plagued by marauding blue tits. Bizarre.

    I am sure there must be some para-epidemiological studies of the spread of this trait (a mix of spread-by-copying -- ooh a tweetie-pie mind virus :) -- and convergent [behavioural] evolution causing new centres to appear). Don't have time to trawl at the mo though. Anyone?

    And I would firmly agree that the redeployment of an existing skill to a new end is indeed a thoroughly mainstream meme. The fact that eyes have been independently discovered 40-odd times (i.e. generated from scratch more or less in seperate lineages) if you believe the hype does not mean that each new species _within one lineage_ creates eyes anew (slight reductio and rather obtuse on re-reading, but my point is that the fact that it is easy to stumble on foil-lid-pecking does not preclude picking up the technique by copying).

    Cheers, Chris.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
      HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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