Modern Vocabulary: ALLELOMIMETIC

What does this term mean?

Saturdays are perfect days for scientific surprises. Surprise—we’re exploring the etymology of allelomimetic behavior today!

Have you even noticed how animals in a pack or birds in a flock tend to follow each other’s leads and act the same? The monkey (or dog or human) does what the monkey sees because of an instinctive propensity to allelomimetic behavior. Let’s break it down:

An allele is one of two or more versions of a genetic sequence at a given genomic location, the combination of which creates an individual’s genotype. Interestingly, allele is actually an abbreviation of the word allelomorph:

BREAKDOWN: AL- (other) + MORPH- (form) 

Mimesis is deliberate imitation or representation, particularly in nature or art. Mimesis is a more scientific word for mimicry:

BREAKDOWN: MIM- (imitate) + -SIS (action)

Thus, describing behavior as allelomimetic (or sometimes allomimetic) simply indicates that these behaviors are acquired through observation and imitation:

BREAKDOWN: AL- (other) + MIM- (imitate) + -ETIC (prone to)

“Thinking about how disturbingly herdlike people become in so many different contexts - mimetic theory forces you to think about that, which is knowledge that's generally suppressed and hidden. As an investor-entrepreneur, I've always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.” —Peter Thiel