On Jan 29, 1:55 pm,
pakihak...@yahoo.ca wrote:
Why dont we just have muscles regardless of activity. Why do
we have to practice holding our breath to increase lung capacity.
[top posting 'corrected']
I conjecture three reasons. The same three reasons would explain
how come an animal can have the capacity to learn. After all, one
would think that an animal could develop an inherited set of instincts
rather than waste time learning.
1) To increase plasticity, as the development of different sets of
muscles may be useful to different animals in different environments.
Animals that inherit that sort of plasticity could colonize all sorts
of environments.
2) To save space on the genome. A predetermined program for muscle
development would need lots of DNA coding to specify exactly how much
each muscle has to develop.
3) Being able to develop different sets of muscles would be very
useful to an animal living with a change of seasons, or on a migratory
cycle.
