There are, however, cases of instinctive behaviour which may seem too
trivial and unimportant to be subject to the sway of natural selection.
There are numberless little idiosyncracies of behaviour which seem to
be truly instinctive, which are readily recognizable as distinctive
traits, but which can hardly be regarded as of sufficient biological
value to determine whether the creatures in which they are developed
should survive or be eliminated in the struggle for existence. In many
cases, however, these serve rather to distinguish the detailed manner
of behaviour than its biological end or purpose. In different species
natural selection may determine the survival of those whose instinctive
behaviour meets a biological need. The relatively unimportant details,
differing slightly in each species, are mere adjuncts; and since
natural selection deals with each species or inter-generating group
separately, the essential behaviour may in each case carry with it
the associated differences of manner. We must remember, too, that, as
in the matter of structure so in that of behaviour, it is the animal
as a whole that is selected for survival; and so long as the whole
is adapted to the circumstances of life, the associated differences
of form or manner may share in, without doing much to determine,
survival. In any case these little instinctive traits, if they are so
trivial as to seem of small value from the biological point of view,
appear to be too unimportant to have been intelligently acquired as
habits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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