how does instinct work? If it’s just “baked” into an animal’s DNA, how does it “activate” and how does it “activate” successfully?
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There’s a very interesting series of lectures by a [Dr. Robert Sapolsky](http://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/) at Stanford, which goes into the mechanisms of biochemistry, from genetics to epigenetics. Epigenetics is a method the body uses various proteins such as hormones to “turn on” or “turn off” various sections of DNA. The DNA itself is coding proteins to do various things, these processes are constant, but they are always changing due to environmental stresses. Sometimes, an environmental stress can alter expression of something, and make that alteration permanent through multiple generations! However, it’s this biochemistry that gives an organism the “desire” to do something, or the propensity to do one thing over another. Like hormones giving a 14 year old boy the interest in girls as the opposite sex rather than just another person (or vice versa). Get a specific stimulus, and the “system” outputs a fairly predictable response. Rabbit hole amplissimum.
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