Question: How can the human genome explain our behaviours and non-physical phenotypes like personality , is there a genetic element to this or is it solely influenced by our environment ?

Faith Davies answered on 21 May 2020:

I wonder the same thing myself. In my garden we have a mother hen who has 5 chicks. The chicks are 1 week old. Yesterday they were all playing in the flower bed when suddenly the mother hen heard or saw something that alarmed her. (a cat maybe?) she made this weird clucking noise and immediately every single chick froze on the spot. then she made a different clucking noise and every chick dove under the nearest bush to hide. It was amazing. And it got me wondering how the heck 1 week old chicks understand what the mother hen says. It MUST be encoded in their DNA somehow, because they only have 1 week of life experience and have never ehard those mother hen sounds before – they didn’t LEARN that behaviour, it was in them from birth. But how do you encode that within DNA? I have no clue. None. but it fascinates me..