Superstitious Behavior in Animals

In comments to someone else's video a couple of weeks ago, kris2pe and I exchanged some comments about the evolutionary precursors to religion in animals. I said I would find some things I had read but couldn't put my hands on at the time. This video is the fulfillment of that promise.

The reading is from Richard Dawkins' book, Unweaving the Rainbow (1998).

This video includes a discussion of Skinner boxes.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Skinner
• Box
• Dawkins
• superstition
• kris2pe
• animals
• darwinshamster

[PantySnatcher]

Read about this same experiment in Dennett's Breaking the Spell. Fascinating.

[DarwinsHamster]

I'm going to have to read Dennett's books and Harris' as well, but I've been kind of lazy. I was surprised how much of the things everyone talks about was anticipated to some degree by Darwin and Thomas Huxley. There sure are some especially great books out now.

[kris2pe]

You put the link in your email lol! That's why it made quite sense to me lol!

[DarwinsHamster]

Sorry I accidentally deleted your last comment here. I was going to hit the reply link but hit remove instead.

[wilthiswork]

Well, in order for you to conclude that animals have religion, you would have to show that not only is religion superstitious, but also that all superstition is religious (both seem like very debatable propositions, but no matter what we decided on those two questions, you would have to equate religion and superstition, not only show that religion is superstitious).

[jlburnitt]

There is a humorous tv show in Britain called Trick or Treat hosted by a man named Derren Brown. He does a rendition of BF Skinners pigeon experiment only instead of pigeons he uses people. If you're interested, it can be found on youtube- Derren Brown Trick or Treat Series 2 Episode 6 - Part 1

[felixq78]

This guy has managed to turn an interesting concept into something that makes us want to stick our heads into an oven,............BORING!!

[DarwinsHamster]

Thank you for all these comments! I'm going to have to read them several times (not at work) for it all to sink in!

[saiello2061]

.. so to finish and answer your question, if religion is a superstitious behaviour ( which I believe it is ) and animals exhibit supertitious behaviour then yes, they got religion! Sorry about the second post,this may be a video site but for YouTube to provide woefully little space for comments is just crap..!

[saiello2061]

Cause + effect makes sense as survival mechanism.When young we use this to test our surroundings,building sets of 'superstitious behaviours'. When older, we aquire reason + these are filtered.Animals can't reason as we do,forcing them to 'invent' causes + balance the equation.IMHO, any SB's in adult humans is a result of this filtering mechanism going awry,so that given a single instance of a cause and a pleasurable effect,the compulsion to stab that button a million times is the result.. ;o)

[happy12806]

sorry, kind of boring, reading the text would take 1/10th the time

[paulend1]

If you Google "superstition in the pigeon" you will be able to find the original paper on the subject. Also, if you do an advanced Google search for "science and human behavior" with the format set to "pdf" you can a full text version of the book which has a full chapter on religion.