I was reading this article about the differences in behaviour between chimpanzees from different tribes.
This made me wonder how much of human behaviour is also controlled by genes. It did not escape my notice that many babies have peculiar habits or behaviour that one of their parents also had when he or she was a baby. Whether a baby that observes a lot, prefers to crawl, sit or walk on all fours, the way of laughing, the way of playing with toys... all seem to be at least partially inherited from parents (often just one parent). As these are innate behaviours they are obviously determined by genetics.
I think that is worth further investigating.
New Scientist said:ARE differences in chimp behaviour down to culture or genetics? Some groups of chimps use twigs to fish for termites, others don't. Some groups communicate by knuckle-knocking, others by slapping. While the accepted wisdom is that these are purely cultural differences, now it seems that genes may be involved too.
A team of primatologists headed by Kevin Langergraber of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, pulled together behavioural data on nine wild chimpanzee groups, and analysed DNA samples from 246 individual apes. Groups that were more genetically different turned out to have significantly more differences in their behaviours (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1112).
This made me wonder how much of human behaviour is also controlled by genes. It did not escape my notice that many babies have peculiar habits or behaviour that one of their parents also had when he or she was a baby. Whether a baby that observes a lot, prefers to crawl, sit or walk on all fours, the way of laughing, the way of playing with toys... all seem to be at least partially inherited from parents (often just one parent). As these are innate behaviours they are obviously determined by genetics.
I think that is worth further investigating.