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Darwinian fairy tales: Do horses really think this way?

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And no wonder smart guys like Eugene Koonin and Eric Davidson are openly contemptuous. The nonsense goes on, but first note this: Darwinism is a modern superstition, where animals are held to think like people and mythical creatures like the selfish gene are held to really exist. And Darwinists claim, in all seriousness, that failure to dunk children in this garbage at school will set a country behind in science.

Here’s more from Darwin’s “science as compulsory story time”:

Bartoš and colleagues’ results uncover a new phenomenon in domestic horses: a female counter-strategy to male infanticide. It appears that domestic mares choose not to raise foals fathered by stallions outside the home herd. If the dominant home male is not the father, he may subsequently attempt infanticide. Two things happen as a result. Either mares manipulate the males’ paternity assessment by promiscuous mating with home males. Alternatively, if the mares are physically unable to have sexual activity with home males, i.e. they are in separate enclosures, they are seven times more likely to abort the fetus, to prevent the waste of energy in producing offspring likely to be lost.

They don’t even make clear whether they mean it is the mare’s strategy or the “selfish gene’s” strategy.

A non-Darwinist could, of course, think of plausible reasons for higher losses when the mare has been in transit early in the pregnancy. But that would be science, not the “science,” beloved of Darwinists.

Comments
You're confusing evolutionary adaptation with "thought." The horses do not "think" this way. They are probably unaware they are even performing this survival tactic. It has been programmed into their brains the same way a human reacts to having their hand burnt. It is hugely expensive for a mammal to produce an offspring. It is also psychologically traumatizing for a social animal (or relatively social animal) like a horse to lose its offspring. Therefore, this adaption, if it exists how it was described, would allow the greatest chance of survival for the LATER continuation of genes into the population.TaslemGuy
July 22, 2011
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A foal and his mummy are soon parted?Mung
July 21, 2011
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What evidence is there that any horse knows or cares how foals originate? Surely, a stallion "does it" because he likes it, and a mare gets pregnant because she is fertile. In due course she drops a foal and feeds it because she likes it, and anyway because she must. Of course, students who study Darwinism learn about the mysterious selfish gene, a master of long-range planning instead.News
July 21, 2011
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"When mares return home after mating with a foreign stallion, they either engage in promiscuous mating with the home males to confuse paternity, or, failing that, the mares abort the foal to avoid the likely future infanticide by the dominant home male." Apparently, the "selfish genes" of the "dominant home male" are bright enough to both understand and care about paternity, but not quite bright enough to understand that an influx of foreign genes into the particular gene pool they control/dominate gives them even more, and healthier, opportunities to propagate themselves.Ilion
July 21, 2011
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