My freshly concieved experiment

This is a scientific and somewhat evil plan that I wrote in my diary today in an extreme state of being high. I'm still high now and I lol'd fairly hard while writing it, so I thought I would share it with the scientific community to pass judgement upon whether it might work.

I have decided to begin an experiment involving the flight distance of doves and the immutability of the species. I am going to approach groups of doves. Most will fly away, usually leaving one lone curious, brave dove. I will reward this genetic inheritance of boldness and decreased flight distance by withdrawing a container of seed from my pocket, spinkling it upon the ground and leaving to watch it with binoculars from my car. Eventually, the flight distance of the average dove/group of doves should decrease, as other doves gradually learn to eat the free food and the emboldened doves pass the trait onto their children.

I am also considering trying to make the doves carnivorous and possibly even vampiritically predatory. I am going to grind up meat and put it in their birdseed, with mealworms and other insects. I am also going to place a saucer of blood next to the seed. Hopefully, they will drink the nutritious blood and thus aquire a taste for blood and a hunger for flesh. It is my sincere and profound hope that the birds begin to attack other birds and even mammals to suck their blood - this is enhanced by their previously talked about 'boldness'. Speciation will occur, and Hays Vampire Dove shall become a glorious reality.

 

Certainly, but what of it? They'll be bolder to them and not flee instantly when they go near them, but I'm assuming that no one else is going to be giving them seed or training them in the same manner that I am. Thus, they should learn to keep coming back for more seed from me and the experiment hopefully succeeds

 

I guess this is yet to be revealed. If other doves start flocking when the naturally 'bold' dove remains to feed, then it must be a learned behaviour and thus isn't going to be inherited... but if the same dove remains consistently without other doves flocking, then we know that he certainly will pass the trait on. Of course, this is essentially useless because doves aren't going hungry around here and just as many (if not more) 'timid' doves will breed and produce children.

My hope is that the bold dove gets the picture, and eventually other bold doves take watch and take the initiative to flock with this dove so that when I approach with my seed and saucer of blood they are around to reap the shared benefit. Of course, there'll be no way to tell whether these are new 'bold' doves are really bold and very observant doves or whether they're just ordinarily timid doves who have been lured by the food. For this reason, I'm going to take it upon myself to approach the doves and gauge the flight distance once more. Ideally, if they really are 'timid' doves they'll fly away and only those doves with a natural tendency to decreased flight distance remain to feed.

Any opinions on whether doves will actually drink blood? I'm inclined to think so, out of curiousity perhaps. However, it doesn't seem to have been done before, as I can't find anything on the internet. Well, at least I'm a pioneer in finding out such important and significant biological questions as whether doves will drink blood...

 

Hmmm, you're right - it won't reduce the flight distance of the flock, as a whole, who will still fly off when either me or anyone approaches. The bold dove, with his decreased flight distance, would remain for a while and then flee too, just as he'd presumably do with me.

However, thankfully I literally live between the ocean and the outback in rural West Australia, so it won't be much of a problem to go out into the uninhabited wasteland, if I was really that serious about eliminating other people as a factor that could screw the experiment up. I think I'm just going to try it in my yard first, to guage a few things; do more doves, on average, remain and not fly away after time passes and I feed them more? Is the flight distance hardwired and is immutable, or will I be able to get closer to the 'bold' doves as they get more and more used to the food - more importantly, is this a learned behaviour or not? And, perhaps most importantly, will the goddam doves drink blood and eat meat?!

 

Aww shucks, cheers bud!

I guess we'll never know whether they actually enjoy it - certainly, if they tried drinking it and refused to ever again then we'd assume that they didn't enjoy it or even can't drink it. In which case I shall do what science demands of me and find a very sensible solution, like putting whipped cream, Smarties, lollypops in the blood a little birthday card with a smiley face near the blood to make it more appealing

 

Well! For your first point, that's some bad wording on my behalf - as someone passionate about evolution and natural selection, I well understand that species are mutable. But I can certainly see why you'd think I meant species are immutable, that's my bad there.

Your second point is very interesting, for a few reasons. Lamarckism is vehemently rejected by the orthodox, 'neoDarwinists' such as Dawkins, Gould etc, and I certainly agree that it's nowhere near as convincing or powerful as a method of explanation as standard old genetically based natural selection. But there is some evidence beginning to arise to suggest that Lamarckism isn't such a ridiculous concept after all, and that things done in an animals life time can have an impact upon the genes, causing mutations, genetic shufflings and other 'modifications' which can be acted upon by natural selection. If you ignore the stupidly controversial title of this article there's some interesting stuff in here about what I've just said.

Why everything you've been told about evolution is wrong | Science | The Guardian

Now, all I'm doing here is saying "Lamarckism isn't an entirely ridiculous concept, and I will recognise it as a POTENTIAL vehicle of evolutionary change - however, orthodox Darwinism is much, much better explained and supported by modern science, so I will be primarily considering the experiment and the results of the experiment in terms of genetic heritability etc." I hope this brand of heresy can be considered 'heresy lite' and it's all good

Finally, cheers for the rep and the kind words man, as I've said this is almost more of an elaborate joke than anything... I was literally giggling while writing about presenting a saucer of pure blood to these peaceful, innocent little doves. But yes, cheers for the rep and the constructive criticisms my friend.

Lawds! I actually laughed, and pretty hard. You'za funny, funny man

To address the serious point underlying this whole thing, Laughing Turtledoves breed throughout the year and have 2 eggs per clutch. I'm fairly sure the eggs don't hatch for roughly 3 weeks or so, though that estimate is the result of some pretty feeble and half-hearted observation about a year ago. Anyhow, given this estimate each pair of doves could have at least 8 to 10 babies per year, as a conservative estimate. The baby doves seem to be able to reproduce at about one year of age or even younger - you don't see very many juvenille doves, and you don't see them for long. So, given these factors, it might not be the 7000 year wait anticipated by that other guy. It certainly will take time, if it's even possible at all, but I'd think this amount of time to be measurable in years or decades.

After all, 7000 years IS older than the Earth's even been here for, right guyz?

 

To be perfectly honest, I'd be less worried about doves getting fat than fucking vampire doves flying around brutally preying upon whatever animal it can get it's vicious, evil little beak into... ignoring, of course, the spread of hideous and probably epidemic diseases that would result from such contact, possibly so severe that half of Australia is turned into blood drinking zombie vampires themselves and a movie is made about it starring Will Smith in the outback.

But yeah, I thought of this too, thinking that it's essentially like feeding seagulls chips at the beach and then complaining about how they flock around you and start screaming at everyone for more food. The point is very valid, and it's not very responsible... but then again, the entire premise of this experiment is grossly irresponsible

If it begins to get out of hand and I have doves at the door snivelling at me for food, then I'll pull the plug. If not, I'll await the glorious rise of the flying death scourge....