Science Quote by Peter R. Grant

Evolution, in Peter R. Grant's framing, isn't just a slow-motion beauty contest over beaks and body sizes; it's a competition over bandwidth. By naming genes tied to the ability to "receive, use and transmit information" as "the evolving properties", he quietly shifts the center of gravity from anatomy to cognition and communication. The line is deceptively spare, but it carries a modern evolutionary punch: what selection often favors is not a trait itself, but the organism's capacity to adapt its behavior as conditions change.

Grant, famous for tracking Darwin's finches through real ecological whiplash, is writing from a world where survival isn't stable. Droughts hit. Food sources flip. Mates change preferences. In that environment, genes that improve perception (receiving), learning/decision-making (using), and signaling or social learning (transmitting) become multipliers. They don't just help an animal in one niche; they help it navigate new niches before its body has time to catch up.

There's a sly subtext aimed at older, gene-as-blueprint thinking. "Information" suggests feedback loops: organisms as sensors and strategists, not passive products of their DNA. It also nods toward culture without saying the word. If information can be transmitted, then selection can operate on the machinery of communication, opening the door to cumulative behavior and, ultimately, the kind of rapid adaptation we associate with humans.

The intent feels less like poetry than a provocation: stop treating evolution as a museum of forms, start seeing it as an arms race over intelligence, learning, and signals.