dan’s blog

kittens! (a treatise on evolution)

September 20, 2006 on 8:41 am | In Uncategorized |

my friend leah has a bunch (six!) kittens, and was so nice as to let me take care of them while she was out of town.  what precious bundles of joy they are!  upon seeing them frolic i could not help but immediately ponder their wide range of personality-driven behaviors, and the evolutionary strategy it implies.  let me elaborate: at only 6 weeks of age, these kittens (all from the same brood - a controlled study?) have significant differences in their personalities.  some are very curious, outgoing and adventurous, others are very quiet and shy, the rest are in between.  the differences are very pronounced.  my hypothesis is: a diversity of personality types in the same brood is a good survival strategy for the species:

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extrapolate our scenario to a large number of broods of wild cats scattered across different primordial landscapes.  The local conditions (food, weather, predators, etc) governing survival will vary considerably from place to place.  Thus the best survival strategy for a new kitten may not be known - in some cases food might be scarce so a fearless, outgoing cat might be the best chance to find some despite the risks.  in other cases predators might be rampant so a shy cat might survive the best.  ideally most of the kittens will survive in the most common environments, but a few outlier personalities seem critical to surviving rare events like a fire or flood even if those personalities are risky in the typical case.  step 2: extrapolate to human personalities.
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of course for this brood of kittens, 100% survival was assured due to their cuteness.