> "In laboratory experiments, cowbirds and other brood parasites that spend too much time with their foster families end up learning their host species’ songs, picking up their behaviors, and attempting to mate with them."
Clearly, this would be an evolutionary dead end for the cowbird species as such mating attempts would be unlikely to result in viable offspring. The reason that doesn't happen appears to be that cowbird parents and their offspring maintain a kind of distant relationship until maturity.
As usual, some people jump on these issues to promote their various ideologies, be it 'biological determinism' or 'social constructionism'. Notably the psychologists and politicans (i.e. German fascism promoted genetic determinism, Russian communism promoted phenotypic plasticity) are the ones who came up with these simplistic one-dimensional concepts, reality being far more complex in every case.
> "In laboratory experiments, cowbirds and other brood parasites that spend too much time with their foster families end up learning their host species’ songs, picking up their behaviors, and attempting to mate with them."
Clearly, this would be an evolutionary dead end for the cowbird species as such mating attempts would be unlikely to result in viable offspring. The reason that doesn't happen appears to be that cowbird parents and their offspring maintain a kind of distant relationship until maturity.
As usual, some people jump on these issues to promote their various ideologies, be it 'biological determinism' or 'social constructionism'. Notably the psychologists and politicans (i.e. German fascism promoted genetic determinism, Russian communism promoted phenotypic plasticity) are the ones who came up with these simplistic one-dimensional concepts, reality being far more complex in every case.