Xref: utzoo sci.misc:2845 sci.psychology:1160 comp.ai:2725 comp.ai.neural-nets:343 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!ames!pasteur!agate!labrea!glacier!jbn 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