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From: jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: sci.misc,sci.psychology,comp.ai,comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Learned Behavior vs. Hard-Wired Behavior
Message-ID: <17868@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 29 Nov 88 03:48:41 GMT
References: <3978@charon.unm.edu> <1753@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <5959@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 25


     The ability to stand, walk, run, avoid obstacles, and run with a
herd without getting trampled appears in horses in the wild within hours
of birth.  Even domesticated horses typically stand within an hour of birth.

     A particulary nice series of photographs illustrating this appears
in "Horses of the Camargue", by Hans Silvester.  See the plates from 12
on, which show the birth of a foal and its first few hours of life.

     Because horses are born more fully functional than most mammals,
they are an interesting study for those interested in truly hard-wired
behavior.  It is very clear that the visual and coordination systems
of the horse are operational at birth, and seem to be functioning
at a high level of performance from the earliest hours.

     I consider this a significant data point when considering how much
of visual processing must be hard-wired.  Horses must have good foot placement
and collision avoidance to run with the herd.  The necessary level of 
performance is present within hours after birth.  This level of performance
is far beyond anything yet achieved in robotics or computer vision.
Clearly the vision and motion coordination systems must be mostly hard-wired 
for this capability to appear prior to any opportunity for training, learning,
or conditioning.

					John Nagle