[luckyme]

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When the first spider froze at the sight of a predator, it presumably survied because of this. Since this is NOT a random mutation, I don't get how it is first got passed down and evolves. Unlike the the physical characteristic of spots, I don't see how a behavioral characteristic such as freezing is passed down for the firs time. Freezing seems to be a "learned" behavior.

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thanks for clarifying.

One problem point seems to be your affinity for brain. By similar reasoning, sunflowers can't turn to the sun. 'we can understand them being yellow, but how do they KNOW to turn at the right time? After all, it occurs in midlife and the seed didn't so it must be a learned behavior.'

Even if there were a 'first spider to freeze', ( which I very much doubt, danger avoidance is ubiquitous) surely there would be something in it's system that caused it and therefore the survival improvement would be the result of a random mutation.

The learning you mention occurs at the evolutionary level not at individual spider level. It's the spiders genetic code that 'learns' but yet it doesn't 'know' it in the sense you're using it, it learns it and knows it the same way it knows to be speckled.

luckyme