Those are awfully complex structures, I couldn’t make one!
In: 613
A mother skunk had two kids that she named In and Out. Whenever In was in, Out was out. And whenever In was out, Out was in.
One day Out was in but she couldn’t find In anywhere. She looked everywhere for In; up, down, left, right, but she could not find In. Finally she asked Out to find In, and Out went right to where In was hiding. When the mother skunk asked Out how he knew where to find In, he replied…
“Easy. Instinct.”
It’s hardwired into their brains. Even if they’re raised by humans and never see another beaver/bird do it, they still do it.
They’re hard wired to do these things. Just like we’re hard wired to learn a language when we’re babies, but its hard AF later in life! Nothing to do with intelligence or sentience.
I’ve asked this question several times without a satisfactory answer. If the animal is just born with this weird quirk, like a spider building a web, then it follows that, the spider has the ability to build an intricate web in an area that makes sense to catch bugs, it then hides and waits for a bug to get caught, it races out, wraps the bug up, eats it, repairs the web, and does it again… All without knowing why it’s doing what it’s doing!? Not only that, but what about us humans? If this weird autonomous behavior is the norm in the entire animal kingdom, then it stands to reason that we humans also have an instinct, regardless of our higher thinking ability, under it as we are also spinning webs for seemingly no reason, but what are we doing instead of spinning webs?
Generally speaking, there are two primary drivers for animal behaviours: their genes, and their environment. How important either of these factors are for explaining any particular behaviour is a subject of much research and debate.
**Genetics**: Core programming or instinct that can become surprisingly complex stored in their DNA passed down through the generations.
The animal elicits a particular behaviour under certain conditions. They shiver when cold, pant when hot, startle when they hear a loud noise etc. These core behaviours evolved to increase in complexity. For example, one species survived more when their startle response triggered them to run away from the noise immediately (deer), while others survived more by freezing perfectly still (rabbits), while others still just leap back out of range of the perceived danger (cats). Evolved genetic behaviours can become surprisingly complex over many many generations. Spiders web building for example (even though its simpler than it looks) in which they create giant concentric circles that get smaller each pass. They just feel an urge to do something and don’t necessarily know why (think hormones). But even this complex behaviour started simple (perhaps by using silk to hang from things or rope slow prey they already caught in) and evolved into what we see today.
**Environment**: Things learned over time based on their experiences.
Cold animals feel that their siblings/parents are warm and huddle up to them, hot animals feel the suns heat and try to hide from it in the shade etc. These can also be taught by parents. Beavers and birds are born and grow up in a dam/nest and so learn that=home. When they are forced to move out they know they now need a home of their own. They are taught the basics by their parents like how and where to find the building materials.
This is where the debate comes into play. A bird never actually sees it’s parents building the nest they grew up in. How do they know how to build it? They start simple. Pick up a twig and place it in a spot that looks similar to where their first nest was. Does it look like the old nest? No? Better go get another twig… repeat until it looks/instinctively feels right.
In the case of Beavers they will start placing sticks in areas of shallow water as a bed/hole to sleep in like they used to. However, they instinctively know to block running water by placing sticks where they hear leaks. Research scientists did a study where they placed a speaker playing the sound of trickling water near a beaver’s dam. The beaver buried the speaker in sticks every time.
So it is a bit of a complex topic and I am far from an expert. But for many of these complex behaviours they are something known as Fixed Action Patterns. Especially a series of actions or responses to a specific stimulus which will always be performed the same way. These are generally genetically “known” meaning an animal raised totally independently of any others or ever taught will still perform the behaviour if presented with the stimuli.
For example with beavers. They make two kinds of dams, those they live in and those they use to block water. Both are instinctual behaviours. You can “trick” a beaver into building a dam on the land by simply placing a speaker playing sounds of running water. This noise stimulus will cause the beaver to essentially automatically build a dam on top of the speaker.
It is important to note these behaviors did not just appear. One day a rodent didn’t just decide to build a dam and became what we know of beavers. But instead the current dam building behavior is likely the result of numerous smaller behaviours which came together to result in the current fixed action pattern of dam building.
As many people have said, it’s “hard wired” into their brains, but I see that this is not a satisfactory answer. While this is not well known, precisely, what that really means is something like this:
In their DNA, the same what that it defines their body shape, and what proteins they’ll produce, it also defines their brain structure. The same way you can practice riding a bike, and it will alter the structure of your brain such that you can ride without thinking, these animals have their brains already structured in a way as to be able to do these tasks without thinking. You no longer think of how to bike once you know how, you just bike.
So it’s the same as any other skill at the brain level, the difference is that they’re born with that structure “hard wired.” Most animals are like this, humans being the exception in terms of brain plasticity (the ability for the brain to change structure due to external stimuli). All animals have varying degrees, and it depends on the behavior, but this is why not all animals can learn anything.
The part about beavers fascinates me. First, they select a site where blocking a portion of the stream will result in a pond. They get it right the first time, they don’t have to try twenty times until they accidentally get it right.
They start building the dam and the beaver nest at the same time. As they slowly raise the dam, the water backs up and forms a small pond, which grows as the dam rises. The beaver drags branches and small logs into position as the water level rises because the logs float.
The beaver nest is in the middle of where the pond will be, but he starts building the nest before there is a pond. Before the pond reaches its future height (how would he calculate that?) he builds an entrance that will be below water when the pond is complete.
Then, he continues building the dome that will be the nest. A coyote might have to swim to get to the nest in the center of the pond, but…it would have to swim underwater to get to the entrance.
This question has been asked so many times on this subreddit. The answer is we don’t know. It’s a mix of genetics and instinct.
I don’t think anyone’s “solved” this yet, to the degree that we can explain it wholly, manipulate a creature’s instincts or make new predictions about instinctual behavior. But consider for a moment that humans do have instincts as well. They’re just so early in your life that you don’t even realize.
Babies have instincts. They nurse, and grasp when their hand is touched, and hold their breath when their face hits the water. Lots of others, too. Most of these go away in the weeks or months after birth. Why? Humans eliminate our instincts after birth because learned behaviors are so much more complex and precise. Instincts are only the best option when there’s no creature around to teach a better version.
Edit: Clearly the best way to get engagement online is to write something that’s mostly-but-not-completely accurate. Thank you all for the insightful conversation! The distinction between reflexes and instincts seems to be more of a spectrum than a hard line to me, and in any case we don’t know what causes either one, neurologically.
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