[bryanrasmussen]

bite behind leg doesn't sound so complex.

bite behind leg if multiple animals going towards X but animal A goes towards Y and biting will make A go towards X would be complex.

bite behind leg is simple and crude and by placing dog in right context produces complex and useful results.

[OgsyedIE]

It still requires solving the symbol grounding problem. How does DNA code for the brain's network weights that correspond to things like the definitions [non-prey target], [goal location], [incentive], [coerce] and [back of leg], or some other suitable set of concepts?

[bryanrasmussen]

I would say from reading the description it doesn't have to do all that, because it sounds like the dog is biting indiscriminately at backs of legs of any reasonable large animal, since it is also biting at the backs of human legs. So I think it doesn't really do any non-prey target reasoning, it just does target size X has back of leg, also I don't know based on description that it does incentive - what is the incentive of biting the back of human legs?

[isoprophlex]

Birds building elaborate nests is something I can't wrap my head around. How do you encode that in DNA, and have a (comparatively tiny) brain execute such complex social behavior?!

[Hendrikto]

There are insects with much much smaller brains than birds, that also exhibit quite complex nest building behavior.

[4gotunameagain]

To me it sounds complex enough to bite behind the leg, not leg in general, and not the leg of a chair for example.

I do not think a dog has to solve partial differential equations for me to be impressed and think that complex behaviours can be innate.