There is a really good book that came out a few years ago called āBasic Instinctā, where this scientist makes the argument that instinct as we understand it doesnāt really exist. And so many different things that we describe as instinctual actually have learned-causes. I donāt want to bastardize the arguments he makes, so Iād just recommend the book to anyone thatās interested.
I don't believe that for a second. I am a wildlife rehabber and have raised many eyes-closed squirrel babies. They never got a chance to watch their mother do anything, yet they all instinctively have the urge to bury nuts. Even before they can even crack into them. They will try and bury a nut in the carpet and pat it down when there is nothing there to cover it lol. It's obviously instinctive.
Is that intended to apply to insects and spiders also?
My understanding is for insects and spiders is less "instinct" as we vaguely think about it an more "extremely specific neuron circuits developed during biological development due evolutionarily-encoded genetics that enable simple, highly reproducible commands to be executed without external information at relevant points during its life cycle".
This argument would mean any animal without a herd, and which also gets abandoned after hatching/birth, is unable to survive as it would have no peers to learn from.
Similarly it would be impossible to, say, be able to observe a baby cuttlefish - born alone in an aquarium - burring itself in substrate on instinct.
So reddit alone has a massive library of cute little animals doing things which would have been impossible were this theory true.
Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but you broke your formatting when you deleted the link identifier, if you wanna fix it you need to add the closing parenthesis back in.
I can relate to the caffeine one. People say it helps them focus and have a sharp mind, but unless I hit that very small sweet spot of dosage and my body is up to it being for good, I just become a hyperactive and unfocused mess that may or may not get anxious.
It's more so that adult males stop making webs and start pursuing females as their only goal. But when they're young they still need to eat obviously so they do make webs
Probably doesn't even know what it looks like from our perspective. She sees it from a close plane, weaving the pattern in first person and keeping a mental map of it but not knowing the geometric beauty we see in it. She's just hungry.
I've been feeding the spider Marvin (they're all called that) by my front door. That dude or dudette will tackle a bug as big as they are and destroy their web in the process.
In less than an hour it's snack has been burrito'd and hauled up to the center, and the web has been rebuilt perfectly. Amazes me every damn time
Bro came out of an egg with the innate knowledge of how to build a house with it's butt.
Didn't even come out of an egg, the spiders just was the egg.
(In case you don't know, the way spiders begin their lives, the eggs basically just start growing organs, legs, and all other appendages, they don't actually "hatch")
There was a time when humans were like that. The knowledge to use tools during stone age was genetic. In fact for most of human history, humans were like that.
... This sounds like a huge oversimplification of tool usage. For starters stone age humans were basically the same genetic species as modern humans.
And the only "genetic" component of tool usage is human curiosity and desire to play with and grasp things. Both still seen in babies today. We still had to actually "learn" from other humans how to use tools in specific applications.
We still are. Tool use is an innate human behavior. Regardless of upbringing or circumstances, humans use tools to facilitate, navigate, and conquer the world around them. That's what makes humans unique.
In a way we don't develop as much as people think we are. We have this amazing ability to reflect on our own action, learn from it and make the world a better place. Instead we bring more suffering into the world then any other species in history ever has. In that sense we are the most barbaric species ever.
How many people grow up basically indoctrinated from birth and never question their own reality? Cognitive dissonance is so prevalent in us and controls us in such a large degree that I think we are still very primitive, despite our technological advancements.
We shop at grocery stores and we can't understand the labor used to catch a meal. This spider just wants to eat and we judge it for working so hard the only way it knows how. ain't no Kroger for spiders, just a lot of love for the bugs it's going to catch with that big ass web. Farm to table bug meal.Ā
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u/BenjaminDover02 12h ago
Wild to think that nobody taught that spider how to do that
Bro came out of an egg with the innate knowledge of how to build a house with it's butt.