>>I can't help but feel we're talking about singular/repeat negative experience that may become a subsequent "inherited behavior" -- maybe I'm reading this incorrectly? Therefore, if imprinting did not happen, how can an "inherited behavior" develop? The wheels are a' spinnin'.....>>

As I pointed out, learned behavior cannot be passed on to the next generation. Otherwise, the offsprings of Fred Astaire would have inherited the knowledge of how to do the fox trot and waltz from their famous father without ever taking a single dancing lesson. Learned behavior can be passed on culturally. Archie Manning, for example, can pass on his acquired knowledge of how to throw a football correctly to his sons by teaching them. Of course, there is no evidence that snakes teach their offsprings to do anything so there is no chance any snake can pass on learned behavior to the next generations.

Inherited behavior happen through mutation and natural selection. If a trait does not already exist because of chance mutation, then no amount of negative reinforcement (or natural or artificial selection) would cause it to evolve. Therefore, if you are going to try to create dogs that can fly by eliminating those that won't fly, you would simply end up with a lot of dead dogs but none that can fly.

L. zonata does not live in rock crevices year round. They only spend the winter in such places. When the weather has warmed up, they disperse into the woodland areas surrounding the rock outcrops and they are exceedingly difficult to find once they have dispersed from their winter retreats. This is a well known fact. Therefore Rick Staub's hypothesis that the injuries seen in wild zonata are the result of attacks by predators while they are inside shallow crevices would need to be supported by evidence. His theory is that such attacks can drive the more experienced snakes into deeper crevices through learning. That is certainly possible but there is little evidence that any predator (other than human snake collectors) routinely hunt the rock crevices for L. zonata.

My hypothesis is that collecting by snake hunters may have removed all of the snakes in a single locality that are found in shallow, easily accessible rock crevices, leaving only those with an innate tendency to inhabit deeper crevices. No learning is necessary. In fact, some of snakes that were caught by Rick Staub and then released were found in the same easily accessible crevices in subsequent years. Rick even cut off parts of the tails of these individuals to collect DNA samples, and yet such injuries did not cause these snakes to look for deeper and more inacessible crevices. Therefore, the available evidence argues against Rick Staub's own hypothesis. Rick Staub's own snakes did not learn. May be he did not apply enough negative reinforcement! LOL

The alternative explanation is that some snakes are simply born with the tendency to prefer deeper, more inaccessible crevices through chance mutation, not through learning or experience.

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