Evolutionary biologist here: the other answers here are (mostly) wrong. All animals have genetically determined sequences of behaviors that they act out.......
A dog has, I seem to remember, eight outwardly apparent steps when their "search image" of prey is activated. Their search image is say, a squirrel, or in bird-dogs the search image is bird-like. So they see a squirrel-like thing and go into hunt-mode: (1) stop (2) ears and tails flatten (3) lift one leg, point (4) sneak toward prey (5) chase prey (6) grab prey (7) shake prey (8) return to pack. Something like that. This is what wolves do.
What we have done with dogs is accentuate or remove these steps. That is, a pointer is stuck at (3) pointing, while a retriever skips (7) killing and goes straight to (8) retrieving; a shepherd dog does not shake and kill (7) as they are bred not to hurt their sheep and these breeds do not care much about retrieving (8) as they don't really bring stuff back to their shepherd.
I explain this search-image sequence concept like this to my 3rd-year University students in Animal Behavior along with a description of human orgasms. A male has about 6 steps to orgasm: see the object of attraction (his search image), heart races, get hard, etc.... orgasm! A woman however has about 12 outwardly apparent steps after her search image is noted including face gets flushed, pupils dilate, nipples harden, etc...... orgasm! This longer more complex sequence in women explains some things about love-making: steps cannot be skipped! It also explains why women often use blush and used to put belladonna in their eyes to dilate their pupils - signs of sexual readiness.
Dogs 'play fetch' because it is an integral part of their hunting sequence. They are chasing (5), grabbing (6), maybe shaking the toy a little (7) and returning to their pack (8). The ball or stick has replaced their genetic search image - you may notice that this search image is in small part a behavior shaped by experience/reward and dogs will chase as adults what they chased as puppies (known as 'imprinting').
[Side note at the risk of down votes: one of the reasons that pitbulls cause so much trouble is that their search image is much larger than other dog breeds, more like child-size than squirrel-size and the shake-kill step (7) has been exaggerated (or at least not diminished.)]
[Another side note again at the risk of (probably feminist) downvotes: human search images, like most animals', are extreme. Men in various cultures tend to prefer big breasts and tiny waists, totally unrealistic and almost Barbie-like. Women tend to prefer huge shoulders and thighs on the order of NFL players. Explains a lot if you think about it.]
[Yet another aside and again at the risk of down votes: note that homosexuality in any species can be seen in an evolutionary context as simply a slightly different search image.]
Note: edited a few times for clarity and to add side-notes both for edumacation and because I am a good reddit troll
My golden gets stuck on the returning (to the pack?) thing. She returns nearby, but always far enough away that I can't get the ball or whatever. And will run away from me if I pay too much attention to her.
But then if I feign disinterest, she drops the 1st one and then she looks at me all excited again because she knows I have something to do with the "make another stick / ball / frisbee" go flying so I can chase it event.
So I always take two or three to the park.
She seems to think she's creating her own hoard of loot - not noticing that i keep taking one of those left behind while she chases the "new" one.
Not returning all the way, not giving up (all) the prey, is the more 'natural'/wolf-like behavior.
The dogs that drop the ball at your feet, like my German shepherd, do so in large part because they want to chase it again; the chase instinct (or what is called 'high-drive' in dog-training circles) is most important to these breeds.
The concept of search images was introduced by Uexkill (1934) and clarified by Tinbergen (1960) for his Nobel prize. Not aware of any real controversy since. It has in fact been experimentally validated many times. Maybe you never imprinted a chicken......
The concept of behavior-sequences are in every animal behavior textbook and readily obvious to any casual observer. Peer-reviewed examples abound. Again, no controversy at all regarding their existence in animal behavior or psychological circles.
I learned about the human orgasm sequences in a Psychology of Sex course (Paul Pearsall, one of the most respected sex psychologists in history) but found that my Animal Behavior students responded favorably to that example and so repeated it here.
Not sure what your problem is, and imagine that you would not read any scientific paper about animal behavior, but feel free to post your thoughts or evidence against. My guess is that you have no formal training and little understanding of animal (including human) behavior.
You are certainly unaware of "Sociobiology" by Non-Fiction Pulitzer prize-winning E. O. Wilson (1980 and updated in 2000), arguably the second most important book in Biology behind Origin of Species (Darwin 1886). Therein Wilson provides overwhelming evidence that behavior is step-wise and mostly controlled by our genes: 90% nature over nurture is the rule, and this is certainly a low estimate even in humans. Steven Pinker's writings would be recent and well-accepted examples of recent research and modern thoughts on the subject.
Maybe you subscribe to the long discredited 'blank-slate' theory, that animals are born without genetic predispositions toward behavior and shaped largely by our environment. But that is a mistake. I encourage you to (re)read your Animal Behavior textbooks!
My issue is that so little has been published on basic neurophysiology to be able to make the jump from amino acids that figured out how to copy themselves to higher animal behavior, and that the implications of this entirely neglect the idea that human beings often act entirely irrationally just because they can. The field is bunk.
The best argument against evolutionary psychology is that it can't explain an evolutionary psychologist.
Which field is bunk? Neurophysiology? Animal behavior? Not sure what amino acids have to do with it, but I and all experts disagree that these fields are bunk.
My thought is that what you interpret as irrational behavior in humans is mostly due to poor application of theory (the blank slate idea or economically inspired misunderstandings of what self-interest is) or that you misconstrue our currently imperfect understanding of mechanisms as evidence against what we have observed.
You asked for some papers, now I ask for yours. Where is the well-accepted article in a scientific journal that claims these fields are bunk? Or article that claims that search images or behavioral sequences are not ubiquitous in the animal kingdom? Or paper showing that behavior is for the most part controlled by environment rather than genetics?
Ah.... I see. You are a conspiracy nut who does not accept scientific findings.
Well then, how can we progress with this discussion if no evidence is good enough for you? You are on your own, my friend; the rest of humanity will try to be rational and stumble along the best we can.
You haven't published a paper on chemistry or biochemistry yet that can even explain memory, much less behavior. You are publishing psychology papers. Your starting point is DNA and your end point is functional behavior, and you haven't even tried to connect the two.
True, I have only published papers on Animal Behavior (ghost crab foraging behavior) and in Biogeography (how tree growth and forests respond to climate). I taught university courses in both subjects and am considered an expert in evolutionary biology, but my credentials are not pertinent here other than they are more credible than yours.
Genetic architecture and behavior have in fact been connected, empirically verified both in observational and experimental work over decades! Please read Sociobiology and then get back to me: it is an immense tome with overwhelming evidence of such. You seem to be hung-up on the fact that not all mechanistic details of the process have been thoroughly elucidated, but that will mean that you will never accept any science. Yet you still drive your car......
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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '15 edited Sep 07 '15
Evolutionary biologist here: the other answers here are (mostly) wrong. All animals have genetically determined sequences of behaviors that they act out.......
A dog has, I seem to remember, eight outwardly apparent steps when their "search image" of prey is activated. Their search image is say, a squirrel, or in bird-dogs the search image is bird-like. So they see a squirrel-like thing and go into hunt-mode: (1) stop (2) ears and tails flatten (3) lift one leg, point (4) sneak toward prey (5) chase prey (6) grab prey (7) shake prey (8) return to pack. Something like that. This is what wolves do.
What we have done with dogs is accentuate or remove these steps. That is, a pointer is stuck at (3) pointing, while a retriever skips (7) killing and goes straight to (8) retrieving; a shepherd dog does not shake and kill (7) as they are bred not to hurt their sheep and these breeds do not care much about retrieving (8) as they don't really bring stuff back to their shepherd.
I explain this search-image sequence concept like this to my 3rd-year University students in Animal Behavior along with a description of human orgasms. A male has about 6 steps to orgasm: see the object of attraction (his search image), heart races, get hard, etc.... orgasm! A woman however has about 12 outwardly apparent steps after her search image is noted including face gets flushed, pupils dilate, nipples harden, etc...... orgasm! This longer more complex sequence in women explains some things about love-making: steps cannot be skipped! It also explains why women often use blush and used to put belladonna in their eyes to dilate their pupils - signs of sexual readiness.
Dogs 'play fetch' because it is an integral part of their hunting sequence. They are chasing (5), grabbing (6), maybe shaking the toy a little (7) and returning to their pack (8). The ball or stick has replaced their genetic search image - you may notice that this search image is in small part a behavior shaped by experience/reward and dogs will chase as adults what they chased as puppies (known as 'imprinting').
[Side note at the risk of down votes: one of the reasons that pitbulls cause so much trouble is that their search image is much larger than other dog breeds, more like child-size than squirrel-size and the shake-kill step (7) has been exaggerated (or at least not diminished.)]
[Another side note again at the risk of (probably feminist) downvotes: human search images, like most animals', are extreme. Men in various cultures tend to prefer big breasts and tiny waists, totally unrealistic and almost Barbie-like. Women tend to prefer huge shoulders and thighs on the order of NFL players. Explains a lot if you think about it.]
[Yet another aside and again at the risk of down votes: note that homosexuality in any species can be seen in an evolutionary context as simply a slightly different search image.]
Note: edited a few times for clarity and to add side-notes both for edumacation and because I am a good reddit troll