The Imitation Factor: Evolution Beyond the Gene

by Lee Alan Dugatkin

Book Overview

Everyone knows "monkey see, monkey do," but how many of us reflect on the proverb's consequences? Biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin asks just how different animals can be from humans if they engage, as they... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684864533
• ISBN13: 9780684864532
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

A powerful set of illuminating concepts!

Charles Darwin established a very important preceding when wrote a notable essay about the theory of emotions. Following these traces, the biologist Dugatkin analyzes the imitative behavior of the animals, since the little fishes guppies till the blackbirds concluding the imitation process is the motive force of the cultural evolution. You will find passionate and conscientious work of fervent interest for any kind of reader.

Imitation and Beyond

Lee Alan Dugatkin is a first-rate animal behavior experimentalist whose specialty is the guppy, as well as a game-theoretic modeler. Most welcome is Dugatkin's talent for popular exposition of animal behavior research.This book is a very general exposition of animal behavior theory for the general public, with a special emphasis on epigenetic transmission of information, which Dugatkin equates with cultural transmission. He does quite a good job, and I would recommend this book to curious newcomers to the field. Dugatkin is especially good at weaving general themes (e.g., the various explanations of mate choice) with the specifics of particularexperiments.My concern here will be as an animal behaviorist whose specialty is human beings. Humans come into the picture in the first sentence of Dugatkin's book: "We desperately want to think of ourselves as somehow distinct from other life forms on our planet...Currently there is the sense that we are unique because"culture" is found only in humans...As we shall see, culture is not humanity's gift to the universe." (p. ix). There is no doubt but that Dugatkin is correct, and indeed, it is impossible to understand human culture as divorced from the broad sweep of cultural phenomena across species. The attempt to do so is a major flaw in sociological and anthropological approaches to human culture--but that is another story to tell.While Dugatkin's assertion is correct, and his efforts to motivate his position are quite successful, it is curious that he does not place his argument in intellectual context. John Tyler Bonner's pathbreaking The Evolution of Culture in Animals (Princeton University Press 1984) is not mentioned, nor is Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb's ambitious Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution (Oxford University Press 1995) are not mentioned.Nor is the Baldwin effect, which is a major causal link from culture to genes (Baldwin, "A New Factor in Evolution", American Naturalist 30 1896).Dugatkin is quite orthodox in taking the gene-culture coevolution definition of culture as "information", a definition anchored in the two great contributions of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, Cultural Transmission and Evolution (Princeton University Press, 1981), and Boyd and Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (University of Chicago Press, 1985). In brief, this view holds that culture is information concerning the organism's physical and biological environment. While the basic biological information transmission mechanism is genetic inheritance, epigenetic transmission may also be fitness enhancing, and when it is, we can expect cultural transmission in animals. I do not dispute the fact that culture includes epigenetic information transmission. For instance, as Dugatkin stresses the tendency for previously mated male guppies to be desirable to unmated females may be due to the fact that older female guppies "teach" younger females who the desirable males are (although there are other plausible expla

Guppy culture

Lee Alan Dugatkin has spent the last ten years studying imitation in guppies and in "The Imitation Factor" he explains his research and summarizes numerous other examples of imitation found in nature. His conclusion: even low intelligence animals like guppies can engage in the non-genetic transmission of behavior through imitation, and that transmission can have an impact on genetic evolution. In carefully controlled experiments using guppies Dr. Dugatkin explores how the tendency to imitate other females in mate selection can override other mate selection preferences. Female guppies of a certain species prefer bright orange males over drab gray ones. Dugatkin places a female and a dull male in one corner of a tank and a bright male in the other and then allows a second female to observe the guppy groupings. Then the first female is removed and the observer female is allowed to choose which male to go to. The observer female shows a greater tendency to select the male she saw with the first female (Yes there is a control to make certain that the observer is not just going to the side of the tank where there were two guppies). Further, after repeated exposure to females associated with drab males, the observer female shows a preference for drab males in general.Beyond his own research Dugatkin also details the research of others on imitation in animals. Examples include some very carefully controlled experiments with pigeons poking open boxes to get food, blackbirds learning which animals are predators, numerous studies of chimpanzees and rats who learn which foods are edible from their presence on other rat's whiskers. In addition to those examples he also discusses when imitation is likely to a useful survival strategy, and points towards other researchers who have developed mathematical models for when imitation is more likely to occur and what affect it will can have on the evolution of a species.Dugatkin is clearing attacking the idea proposed by others such as Susan Blackmore that humans are different from other animals because of the ability to imitate. If behavioral imitation is as common place as Dugatkin's evidence shows, these arguments are certainly erroneous. With his numerous examples and carefully controlled experiments Dugatkin does a very credible job of proving his point. I have just a few quibbles with this book. Dugatkin's definition of culture is a bit too loose for my preference. I would only count the guppies as being cultural because they can develop a general preference for drab males that can be transmitted, whereas Dugatkin would consider it culture even if the preference only applies to one male at a time. I am not certain under his definition whether a distinction can be made for fleeting imitation examples like observer animals moving when they see another member of their species fleeing something the observer can not see. I would hesitate to call that culture because their is nothing to pa

Imitation in animals

This is a wonderful book - clearly written, authoritative, up-to-date, and fun. I recommend it to all people interested not only in the study of animal (and human) behavior, but also to those who want a good read about what researchers are up to. Dugatkin is a first-class biologist and a great writer with a good sense of humor.