So, unhatched frogs can learn to recognize predators while still in the egg. It would be fascinating for more research to be done, and widely reported, on what humans learn in the womb, would it not? Anyway, here’s a little research into the mental abilities of unhatched frogs:
Some say it’s never too late to learn new things, but can it be too early?
Apparently not, if the behavior of wood frogs is any indication. Those amphibians can learn to identify predators while still in the egg, according to new research by Alicia Mathis of Missouri State University in Springfield and several colleagues.
After hatching, many amphibians and fish learn to recognize a predator by associating its odor with an alarm pheromone released by injured conspecifics. Mathis’ team wondered whether frogs might have that cognitive capacity even earlier, as embryos.
For three hours a day, on six consecutive days, the team exposed wood-frog eggs to water from a bucket containing crushed tadpoles mixed with water from a bucket housing fire-belly newts. (The newts, native to Asia, are unfamiliar to wood frogs, but eat tadpoles of other species.) A control group received newt water alone.
Two weeks after hatching, only the tadpoles that had experienced the combo of crushed-tadpole and newt water reacted when newt water was presented by itself: they stopped moving, a typical anti-predator response.
The study complements previous research showing that frog embryos can learn to distinguish between food flavors even before they hatch. Classes start early in a frog’s life, it seems.
I wonder why it’s so easy to speak of “frogs still in the egg” as “frogs”, but humans in the womb are not called “people”, and rarely are referred to as “humans” by the pro-choice crowd, “fetus” being the appropriate distancing word to help us avoid thinking about just what abortion usually is, namely the unjustified killing of a human being.
Imagine if humans in the womb could “recognize predators”. I expect they’d start with abortion “doctors”, the real predators in the drama. (I wonder why the media never breathlessly reports on “predatory abortion mills”. On second thought, maybe I don’t wonder all that much. Too busy reporting on “predatory lenders”, maybe?)
Maybe it will enlighten people if some university somewhere actually does some serious research into “fetal learning”? Well, a very small amount has been done.
“The fetuses learn about their mother’s voice in the womb and then prefer it after birth. Our findings provide evidence that in-utero experience has an impact on newborn/infant behaviour and development and that voice recognition may play a role in mother-infant attachment.”The findings also suggest that the foundation for speech perception and language acquisition are laid before birth, says Kisilevsky.
But isn’t it interesting how little of this kind of research there seems to be? Wouldn’t you think that researchers would be fascinated about this? You might find it interesting to search the web for mention of such research. You’ll spend some time, and you won’t find much. That makes sense, of course; the academic establishment is so pro-abortion that it avoids anything that makes the slightest suggestion of inherent value in the fetus, er, I mean, very small person.
But we know more about the breeding habits of hammer head sharks.
September 4th, 2010 8:24 am
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