Burt Guttman wrote: I guess the only take-home lesson I can suggest for now
is that we
shouldn't naively look at a bird (or any animal) doing something that
strikes us as odd and assume there's some kind of adaptational reason for
it. Some actions may be inconsequential byproducts with no function at
all.

Good point. (BTW, some of us suffer from the Male Answer Syndrome. We
feel the need to be able to provide an answer to every question, whether or
not we know anything about the subject.) Having unburdened my guilt on
that subject let me add to Burt's point that many formerly adaptive
features are conserved despite no longer being useful because the genes are
stable, the feature is not harmful to survival and the creature's energy
budget can handle it. Behavior is surely one of the features we struggle
the most to understand. For example, next time you're at a truck stop,
watch a driver walk away from his rig and then glance back as if to make
sure it's still there. (OK, please don't turn this into a truck driver
thread!)

Herb Curl



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