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Yep... also add the "let's go up the river as far as we can, and we'll find a nice spot somewhere over there".

detourdog 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Sometimes young Moose from the north run past the mating grounds through excitement. They end up in my neighborhood for the season and then run back north.

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ant6n 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, maybe this „find a nice spot“ search function is the „memory“ that’s encoded in genetics.

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shkkmo 4 days ago | parent [-]

It's already been established that a sense of smell is vital in Salmon's ability to return to the headwaters of their birth. I'm not aware of any "genetic" component, it is simply that Salmon remember the smell of where they were born and most salmon try and return. The feat is amazing and there are many "instinctual" behaviors involved, but no evidence that there is a genetic heritage from a specific headwaters is important in returning to that headwaters.

This "genetic memory" talk is just uninformed people jumping to conclusions and spreading speculation as fact.

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ant6n 4 days ago | parent [-]

I’m merely proposing a mechanism for how it could be possible to have salmon return to the same spot after several generations, if that actually does happen.

The idea would be that a salmon could be genetically predisposed to follow a certain path, perhaps preferring the smell of a certain combination of chemicals, thus encoding the location. It means the „memory“ would be encoded via genetics as a result of genetic combination and mutations, and the „encoding“ would essentially just be selection. It’s just speculation on how this genetic memory idea could work without actually encoding memories on genes.

	▲	shkkmo 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> if that actually does happen. There is no evidence that it does. There are cases where such mechanisms have been proposed, but postulating such a mechanism in this case when there isn't evidence of the behavior, is uninformed speculation.