Friday, December 12, 2014

Learning?

Consider this nice little video on pygmy sea horses. They apparently match their color to the coral that they land in. So off-spring of orange sea horses go purple when placed on purple coral. So there is a general capacity to change colors and a specific capacity to match the color one is exposed to. Is this learning? It is environmentally responsive, right? But does one really want to say that the Color Acquisition Device "learns" which color to become?

I am sure that you can see why I am asking this.  Language from where I sit looks a lot like this: G development in response to environmental input. The two cases are not identical, but they are not entirely different either.  At any rate, enjoy the video. These critters are cool.

1 comment:

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