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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How does instinct explain situations where a creature will be born with knowledge for example how to get to a certain breeding ground hundreds of miles away as in the case of some moth
How does instinct explain situations where a creature will be born with knowledge for example how to get to a certain breeding ground hundreds of miles away as in the case of some moth
How does instinct explain situations where a creature will be born with knowledge for example how to get to a certain breeding ground hundreds of miles away as in the case of some moth
I guess I can describe a small sliver of what would form a larger part of an “instinct” to illustrate a point.
Take as an example an insect or animal that might hunt crickets. We can measure their brain activity and see it responds with different strength to different sounds, and like most traits, the responsiveness will range on a gradient — kind of like how people run the range from short to tall or skinny to fat or weak to strong.
The animals that are born with neurons that respond more strongly to the right sound for their surrounding prey will do better at eating and reproducing, having children that are also more likely to respond to the appropriate sounds.
And maybe some of those offspring are naturally aggressive while some are more passive — and guess which ones will do better at surviving, by munching on prey and getting the energy to bang out more offspring, with like genetics and thus behavior.
But maybe some develop so much aggression, they then start picking fights with bigger stronger animals or humans, resulting in them getting culled — next thing you know, you end up with a generation of offspring that are tuned to chase after sounds that lead them to the right prey, which they react aggressively to, but that also learn to avoid messing with other predators or more dangerous competitors — since the ones that didn’t follow that pattern were naturally culled by starvation or ass kicking.
Simplifying things, but between reflex loops, neuron responsiveness to specific stimuli, and general evolution, you can intuitively explain a lot of instinctual behavior — as simplfiied as my above breakdown is. It’s neat with lower life forms because you can really map out the specific neuron circuits and responses.
Does this call for rocket scientists?
I guess I can describe a small sliver of what would form a larger part of an “instinct” to illustrate a point.
Take as an example an insect or animal that might hunt crickets. We can measure their brain activity and see it responds with different strength to different sounds, and like most traits, the responsiveness will range on a gradient — kind of like how people run the range from short to tall or skinny to fat or weak to strong.
The animals that are born with neurons that respond more strongly to the right sound for their surrounding prey will do better at eating and reproducing, having children that are also more likely to respond to the appropriate sounds.
And maybe some of those offspring are naturally aggressive while some are more passive — and guess which ones will do better at surviving, by munching on prey and getting the energy to bang out more offspring, with like genetics and thus behavior.
But maybe some develop so much aggression, they then start picking fights with bigger stronger animals or humans, resulting in them getting culled — next thing you know, you end up with a generation of offspring that are tuned to chase after sounds that lead them to the right prey, which they react aggressively to, but that also learn to avoid messing with other predators or more dangerous competitors — since the ones that didn’t follow that pattern were naturally culled by starvation or ass kicking.
Simplifying things, but between reflex loops, neuron responsiveness to specific stimuli, and general evolution, you can intuitively explain a lot of instinctual behavior — as simplfiied as my above breakdown is. It’s neat with lower life forms because you can really map out the specific neuron circuits and responses.
I guess I can describe a small sliver of what would form a larger part of an “instinct” to illustrate a point.
Take as an example an insect or animal that might hunt crickets. We can measure their brain activity and see it responds with different strength to different sounds, and like most traits, the responsiveness will range on a gradient — kind of like how people run the range from short to tall or skinny to fat or weak to strong.
The animals that are born with neurons that respond more strongly to the right sound for their surrounding prey will do better at eating and reproducing, having children that are also more likely to respond to the appropriate sounds.
And maybe some of those offspring are naturally aggressive while some are more passive — and guess which ones will do better at surviving, by munching on prey and getting the energy to bang out more offspring, with like genetics and thus behavior.
But maybe some develop so much aggression, they then start picking fights with bigger stronger animals or humans, resulting in them getting culled — next thing you know, you end up with a generation of offspring that are tuned to chase after sounds that lead them to the right prey, which they react aggressively to, but that also learn to avoid messing with other predators or more dangerous competitors — since the ones that didn’t follow that pattern were naturally culled by starvation or ass kicking.
Simplifying things, but between reflex loops, neuron responsiveness to specific stimuli, and general evolution, you can intuitively explain a lot of instinctual behavior — as simplfiied as my above breakdown is. It’s neat with lower life forms because you can really map out the specific neuron circuits and responses.
Does this call for rocket scientists?
Does this call for rocket scientists?
A lot of answers here do a decent job of explaining what “instinct” _is_, but not how it “activates” or comes to be.
Beyond just the “pre-programmed circuits” that respond to different inputs (such as increased alertness when hearing certain sounds, or that possum playing dead, even while the coyote peed on it), it’s important to realize that members of a species that _didn’t_ respond that way tended to die. If they died before procreating, their “bad instinct” programming didn’t get passed on.
Consider a bird chick that, hypothetically, never picks up on the instinct to fly: it will probably die young. Same for migratory birds; the ones that _don’t_ have the instinct to head south (assuming northern hemisphere) would likely die in the winter (though nowadays, I’m sure some would find food and shelter with people, possibly perpetuating that lack of instinct).
The really wild “instinct” for me is monarch butterfly migrations. It’s several generations for one migratory cycle, so I’m not really sure how that works; but it must, since it does.
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