Description: Imitation is how all animals, humans included, figure out what they are going to do. The Imitation Factor completely changes the way we understand the evolution of our behavior because it demonstrates that customs and traditions were an evolutionary force guiding the history of life hundreds of millions of years before humans walked the planet. In other words, evolution isn't all in the genes.

Lee Alan Dugatkin draws on a wide range of his own and others' research into the behavior of fish, birds, whales, and humans to reveal the failure of genetic determination to explain mating behavior and the fundamental process of learning. As we watch people become popular and find ourselves attracted to them, we are doing nothing more than what animals have been doing for eons. Dugatkin follows the course of imitation as it leads to teaching and decisively proves that the mechanics of "animal education", the most potent of social forces, built the species-wide phenomena known in our own society as civilization.

An original, brilliant, and jargon-free presentation of a profound new idea in evolution, The Imitation Factor will have an enduring impact on the way we understand life on earth, and ourselves.

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