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by suddenlybananas 492 days ago
>Which cultures completely restrict their infants from attempting to walk?

The ones I mentioned in my comment.

>Did you read the paper you linked? It describes all the immense amount of learning that actually happens.

Again, as I said, there is a degree of fine-tuning but the core mechanisms are innate.

Some examples:

> In particular, the core premotor components of locomotor circuitry mainly derive from a set of embryonic interneurons that are remarkably conserved across different species

>Detailed EMG recordings in chick embryos during the final week of incubation showed that the profiles of EMG activity during repetitive limb movements resemble those of locomotion at hatching

> In addition, human fetuses exhibit a rich repertoire of leg movements that includes single leg kicks, symmetrical double legs kicks, and symmetrical inter-limb alternation with variable phase.

I don't think you read the article, or else you think that "development" means learning.

>Have you actually seen a foal walking? They are very visibly learning how to do it!

They can walk right away, but they get better at it. It's innate, but you can fine-tune it. Like I said.

Another (impressive) example of an animal innately walking, this time to avoid predators immediately after hatching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3OjfK0t1XM

1 comments

I think your definition of innate is counter to the common definition of innate. The common definition of innate is that there is no thought behind full understanding and capacity to perform- for example, snakes do not generally need to learn how to move without legs or how to open the mouth large enough to consume big food. There isn’t a try/fail cycle while they understand the capacities of their body. I fed my pet snake a baby quail for the first time in its life and it clearly had to learn how to eat it (tried and spat out the leg, wing, etc) even though the core mechanism of big mouth big swallow is there was clearly innate in it. Just because there is a core mechanism to walk existing in babies doesn’t mean the baby doesn’t still need to learn how to perform the behavior voluntarily, on command, consciously according to their own will.
What you just described for the baby applies equally to the snake. It's obviously difficult to neatly segment things into innate and non-innate, but the idea that walking is a matter of maturation rather than "learning" is the mainstream view among scientists and has been for a century.

Again, I conceded that you have to "fine-tune" to get good at walking. But the contrast that with say, playing golf. That's something that categorically has to be learnt, we don't see fetus practicing their drive in utero.