Post by Dalecorrect me if I am wrong, but didn't Darwin believe that learned
behavior added to evolution?
Sigh. I really should not be responding to an off-topic post, but...
Darwin wrote about natural selection of inherited characteristics.
(Actually, he wrote about a lot of things, including the succession
process by which bare rock eventually becomes soil bearing vegetation.
Back then, a "naturalist" studied everything.) The concept of
"evolution" was already being batted around in both the natural
sciences and in the popular imagination long before Darwin. What
Darwin did was propose a mechanism by which it might happen, backed
up by tons of observational data of speciation in currently living
fauna.
Post by Dalecertain instincts come from DNA
Which would make them inheritable traits, and therefore subject to
natural selection.
Post by Dalewho is to say that learned behavior could not be added to the DNA in
sperm and eggs?
You have evidence of a workable "write to DNA" mechanism? That is an
extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof.
The teaching of young by parents is a more demonstratable method for
transfering learned behavior from one generation to the next, at least
for those species that have "parenting". In this case, the inheritable
trait that might be favored by natural selection is a tendency for
parents to spend time showing their young how to do things, and/or a
tendency for young to imitate what they see their parents doing.
More time consuming that simply inheriting skills, but much more flexible.
For example, bears in Yellowstone have been observed teaching their cubs
preferred methods for tearing open different models of cars; these skills
cannot be more than a few decades old, and it would have taken thousands
of generations for them to evolve genetically.
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