There is also Social evolution where learned traits are passed down make it more/less likely to survive. This kind of evolution happens more rapidly than genctic.
So lets say there's an social animal that's lead by it's dominate pair (call them rulers if you will). They're having problem's controling the lesser animals (think ill call them pesants).
Then they learn of this thing called religion, which gives pesants reason to be a productive member of society, and not worry about death all the time (seeming most of the animals died before 25). This stops alot of the crime and killing and makes their colony more efficent.
Now its not enought to just be more efficent you have to wipe out your competitor's also (survival of the fittest). So for about 10 centurys nothing but war's between different religion's occur.
Also sometimes it easier to just absorb a religion than kill it out, so they do that a bit too. And incorperate holiday's and ritual's from other religion's, eg a ritual of giving gifts to each other to mark the shortest day in the middle of winter (seeming it was hard ot measure when the shortest day was, it took about 3 days to they could tell the day's were getting longer).
Now at the present day these animal's have developed really efficent law enforcement so religion is no longer nessesary for the control of large populations and death dosn't happen until animals are really old, so death isn't much of a concern anymore.
And so the number of animals that beleive in religion rapidly decreases.
THE END
My $2 worth
[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 16 July 2000).]
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