Heritable vs Acquired Traits

• HERITABLE traits are passed from parents to offspring through chromosomes.
• OFFSPRING inherit half of their trait information from one parent and half from the other, so an individual’s inherited traits tend to be similar to their parents.
  • People can also pass these traits onto their children.
• Physical traits like body structures and instinctual behaviors are often heritable.

• ACQUIRED traits are learned or received from the environment.
• Because these traits come from an individual’s surroundings, they can differ greatly from one’s parents.
• Learned behaviors, injuries, personal choices and body modifications are all acquired traits.
• Acquired traits can often be changed.

Inherited Examples:

• Camouflage
• Eye color
• Movement method
• Beak Shape
• Migration

But what about the rest?

Acquired Examples:

• Writing
• Dying hair
• Colored Contacts
• Riding a bike
• Fabio cow’s wig

• The human skeleton is built by proteins with size directions that are inherited from parents. But the food a person eats is used to make the proteins, so a good or poor diet can influence overall height.
  • Very tall children are the result of inheritance from parents and good nutrition.

• The human brain is built by proteins with directions that are inherited from parents. But the food a person eats and learning experiences heavily influence how quickly people can learn and access information.
  • Highly intelligent children inherit neural protein directions from parents, have good nutrition and lots of learning experiences.

• Like intelligence, personality information is held in the brain and it is believed people are born with a baseline personality.
• Every interaction with have with other humans, entertainment and environmental things shape our overall personality.
  • It is heavily influenced by the environment and continues to change through our lives.

• Scientists have been questioning human features and behavior since before written records. So a lot of the patterns are known.
• But for things we aren’t sure of, we study IDENTICAL TWINS.
  • Since they have the same heritable traits from their parents, differences between them are due to the environment!