Re: Underestimating 'r'

Tim Tyler (tim@xxxxxxxxxxx) writes:
> If an organism judges his relatives to be those with a
> pheremone signal related to their own, then inbreeding would
> be likely to create the impression that everyone was a relative -
> and cause the organism's circuits causing altruism to be provided
> to relatives to be triggered.

Interesting idea. I suppose that could happen.
But then, as time passed, I suppose the ones on
the island would re-adjust and reduce the degree
to which they show altruism to someone just
because they have the same pheremone as themselves;
or, perhaps they would somehow manage to retain
a number of different pheremone signals in the
gene pool: perhaps
the ones on the island would tend to develop
a keener sense of smell as one way of
accomplishing this.
--
Cathy Woodgold
http://www.ncf.ca/~an588/par_home.html
We are all Iraqis now.

.

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