Social interactions override genetics when birds learn new songs

(University of California - San Francisco) New UC San Francisco research finds that although young male songbirds are genetically predisposed to sound like their fathers, enriched early experience with a foster-father can overcome this genetic destiny. This finding has striking implications for our thinking about how experience influences the genetics of complex human traits like learning ability or even psychiatric disease, the authors say.
Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: news