Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA04994 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 26 Jan 2001 14:20:17 GMT User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 09:17:08 -0500 Subject: Re: MIT research reports rats dream of mazes From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B696D2D6.6DEF%bbenzon@mindspring.com> In-Reply-To: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230010D1A7F@DELTA.newhouse.akzonobel.nl> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
on 1/26/01 2:36 AM, Gatherer, D. (Derek) at
D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl wrote:
> LdB:
> Studies must have been done on whether the progeny of maze-running
> champions have inherited maze-knowledge or -running skill. Does anybody here
> know if this is the case?
>
> Derek:
> That would be _highly_ unlikely - but testable, and therefore a great idea.
> A great idea from the point of view of memetics, that is, since we have a
> hypothesis (ie. rats teach their children, or in some weaker way have
> cultural transmission by imitation or whatever) which we think it is
> worthwhile to test.
[snip]
>
> How would you design the experiment in order to give the rats opportunity to
> learn, and how would you exclude the fact that you might just be performing
> a selective breeding experiment for clever rats????
And just how would/could one rat learn a maze from another rat? Unless we
have reason to believe that rats have something comparable to the
navigational dance of bees, the only thing I can think of would be for the
student rat to follow the teacher rat through the maze. Now, if the student
rat is just playing follow the leader, it isn't likely to learn anything. In
any event, I don't see how this sort of learning could be regarded as
memetic.
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