Instinct Animal Behaviour

Learned responses are not instincts.

Instinct animal behaviour. Behavioral genetics has become an increasingly important field as modern technology has allowed researchers to locate specific genes and alleles responsible for some behaviors. An infant grasping an object placed in the palm of his hand breathing a spider spinning a web and a bird building a nest are all examples of instinctive behavior. An animal adjusts its behaviour based on experience that is it learns when experience at one time provides information that will be useful at a later time. An instinct is a hard wired inborn behavior that enables a human or animal to cope with its environment.

Animal instincts come naturally to animals when they are born. The act of shaking water from fur in an instinctive behavior. Instinctive behavior is behavior that is not learned but comes naturally to an animal. Animals also get jealous and violent or greedy and callous and develop irrational phobias and prejudices just like us.

Ernst mayr a leading figure in twentieth century evolutionary thought saw behavior as a continuum ranging from completely closed or fixed by the genotype to completely open extremely flexible and dependent on the environment. In the past the term instinct has stood for a number of distinct conceptions about animal behaviour for example alexander jamieson in the first volume of his a dictionary of mechanical science arts manufactures and miscellaneous knowledge 1829 defined the term instinct as an appellation given to the sagacity and natural inclinations of brutes which supplies the.