Eat like a monkey; act like a monkey

By: James V. Kohl | Published on: November 19, 2012

Estrogenic plants linked to altered hormones, possible behavior changes in monkeys
Excerpt: “Eating certain veggies not only supplies key nutrients, it may also influence hormone levels and behaviors such as aggression and sexual activity, says a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, that could shed light on the role of diet in human evolution.”
My comment:  In 1996 we detailed the organization and activation of vertebrate behavior and included molecular epigenetics. The model was subsequently extended to invertebrates and led to details of nutrient chemical-dependent pheromone-controlled social and sexual behavior in species from microbes to man. The honeybee model organism provides the best example of the epigenetic tweaking of immense gene networks in superorganisms that solve problems through the exchange and the selective cancellation and modification of signals. However, this primate research makes it somewhat clearer how an environmental drive evolved from that of food ingestion in unicellular organisms to that of socialization in insects and in mammals.
For example, in other mammals, including other primates, food and pheromones cause changes in hormones such as luteinizing hormone, which has developmental affects on behavior in nutrient-dependent, reproductively fit individuals across species that signal fitness via pheromones. This links what organisms eat to nutrient chemical-dependent individual survival, to their pheromone production, and to species survival via the epigenetic effects of nutrient chemicals and pheromones on intracellular signaling and stochastic gene expression. That fact should eliminate the theory that random mutations cause evolution from further consideration, but only if people are willing to accept the biological facts and question the evolutionary theorists whose works they have blindly accepted.
What may still be problematic in this context is the fact that the text of the journal article reported on above does not mention the epigenetic effects of nutrient chemicals or pheromones despite what is neuroscientifically well-detailed in the context of their effects on hormones that affect behavior. We are left to wonder whether these researchers know why or how what organisms eat determines their behavior.
They conclude that “Further study of interactions between estrogenic plants and primates in a natural setting should provide many exciting new discoveries relevant to a broad range of fields, including medicine, conservation, ecology, and evolution.” However, they seem to ignore the obvious fact that chemical ecology epigenetically drives adaptive evolution via ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive niche construction.


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