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I wonder sometimes how tiny brains work. Take butterflies: they can flit among flowers on a bush or in a small area on the ground; how do they know how to move
by mcswell 5y ago
I wonder sometimes how tiny brains work. Take butterflies: they can flit among flowers on a bush or in a small area on the ground; how do they know how to move around so they fly to a nearby flower, then stop and insert their proboscis into the nectar-bearing region? I guess there is no real learning going on--the behavior is probably innate--but still, it seems miraculous.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y agoI believe they call that Hebbian Learning in neuroscience.
- phreeza 5y agoNot really, hebbian learning is also learning from experience. Butterfly behavior is probably mostly hardwired.
- neuah 5y agoI agree, it is miraculous. the fact that dna is ultimately storing all the info for specifying neural circuits that robustly support such complex innate behaviors (often with very little post development tuning / learning) , that to me is mind-blowing. And butterfly behavior is one thing, but what about innate detection of predators in some visual systems? How do you encode a snake detector in dna?