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again, it must not be assumed that a
genetically-influenced behaviour is necessarily complex in origin. For example,
male sticklebacks will attack other male sticklbacks during mating season
because of their possession of a red belly. This sounds as if their genes have
hard wired a very specific piece of behaviour (attack red bellies). However, the
truth is rather simpler: male sticklebacks will attack practically anything red,
including the red of a van passing the window and reflected in an aquarium tank
( tinbergen, 1951). Again, a young herring gull chick will peck at the red dot
on its mother's beak to get the mother to regurgitate food. This again seems a
very precise behavior until one learns that chicks will also peck at many red
stimuli, such as red kintting needles (though the chick become more selective in
what it will peck at as it gets older_see
Hailman,1967).
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