I can see how a gene can express itself in a physical trait. But I have trouble understanding instinct — how patterns of behavior can be transmitted genetically.
I did some reading on “fixed-action patterns.” The cloud of unknowing did not lift for me.
Identity isn’t just a matter of physical expressions of genes. The identity of being a bird involves having feathers, but it also involves building nests.
Within the identity of nest-building creatures there are architects (hummingbirds and orioles) and those that barely bother (yellow-billed cuckoos and mourning doves).
The way birds behave in building nests is consistent by species. This is not learned behavior. Birds raised in captivity by humans build nests that are true to species.
I have no problem imagining that a mad biologist with access to a gene-editing lab could change the color of an oriole’s feathers. That’s just a change in the physical expression of a gene. But I can’t imagine the mad scientist changing its nest-building behavior with some genetic editing. That seems to me to be more of a change of the bird’s history, its evolution.
It seems like a claim that we have a technology that could change the past.
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