There are many instinctive behaviors of animals in nature that often amaze us. They have never learned or relied on experience, but they are able to accomplish a complex series of incredible moves. For example, spider webs, bees nesting, migratory birds migrating... It's all out of its instincts.
In his book On the Origin of Species, Darwin analyzed how animal instincts evolved.
An activity, which even we ourselves have to have experience to accomplish, is done by an inexperienced animal, especially by a young animal, and when many individuals do it in the same way without knowing why the purpose is, it is often called instinctive. Excerpt from On the Origin of Species
One is how instinct evolved.
Darwin explained the evolution of instinct with his great theory of natural selection. He believes that animal instincts are capable of producing tiny variations, just like their body structure. If the mutation adapts to the changing environment, it will be selected by the natural environment and will evolve in a direction of continuous improvement, and eventually form the incredible instincts of nature's various complexities.
Two ants and aphids help each other.
Darwin believed that the instinct of each species was for its own benefit and had never been born purely for the benefit of other species.
The instincts of one animal may inadvertently be exploited by another animal. That is to say, some animals will take advantage of the instincts of other animals.
But aphids seem to be an exception.
When an ant gently touches the tail of an aphid with its antennae, the aphid will instinctively secrete nectar that the ant likes to give to the ant as food. Darwin tried to touch and slap the aphid slightly with a hair, but none of it secreted.
Aphids secrete nectar for ants as if willingly. Darwin believed that the benefits for aphids were that ants cleared them of slimy nectar.
In fact, there is a mutually beneficial and symbiotic relationship between ants and aphids. The evolution between them is a synergistic development in mutual help. Aphids provide food for ants, and ants act as "guardians" of aphids, repelling predators and creating a good feeding environment for them.
Three cuckoos borrow the nest to lay eggs instinct
Cuckoos are usually on the spot by irresponsible mothers, just give birth to and raise, in fact, this is really wronged them, if not there is a difficulty which mother would be so cruel.
The problem of the cuckoo is that it lays eggs every three to five, it can not blindly incubate the eggs without foraging, this time take advantage of the fact that other birds do not pay attention, lay the eggs in their nests, let others do the work for them at first only occasionally, but the mother bird regards the young birds as their own, so that the young children thrive, which is undoubtedly beneficial to them, and this behavior is retained through natural selection.
Similarly, ostriches, female ostriches also lay eggs every three to five, but they join forces to lay eggs together, lay a nest today, a few days, another nest, and the task of incubating the eggs is entrusted to the male ostrich, the glorious husbands. This strategy is undoubtedly successful, and the male ostrich willingly pays for the child is really a good father.
IV. The instinct to keep slaves.
1 Red ants. The slaves of the red ants were the black ants, which were the spoils of war they had looted. Males and females are pampered all day long, and they are only responsible for mating and laying eggs. The worker ants (female sterile ants) struggle to catch the black ants as slaves and do nothing else. All the work is for slave ants, building nests, caring for larvae, cleaning, carrying food... So much so that these jobs, which originally belonged to the worker ants, they could not do it at all. Interestingly, when the nest was in danger, even the decision to move and where to move was left to the slaves. Finally, they carried their masters between their jaws and moved them out of the nest. The loyalty of the slave ants is really surprising, as if they do not think that they are plundered slaves, but instinctively do their part. The slave owners who were high above them would do nothing, so much so that they would starve to death without the slave ants.
The red ant robbed the black ant originally to eat it as food, but the black ant actually helped it to do all the work, which was undoubtedly more beneficial to the red ant, because the queen did not need to give birth to so many worker ants, it was as usual. Through natural selection, such instincts are preserved.
2 Blood ants The way the blood ants raise slaves is to prey on the pupae of other black ants, and the pupae that were originally intended to be used as food can do a lot of work and do not treat themselves as outsiders, which also brings benefits to the blood ants, which is equivalent to many more worker ants after the queen, which is strengthened by natural selection. Interestingly, if they were to migrate, the slave ants would be forcibly taken away, and it seems that the master still did not regard the slave as his own.
If the blood ants want to plunder the yellow ant pupae, they will encounter desperate resistance, so they are very jealous of the yellow ants and dare not move the pupae of the yellow ants. It seems that bullying soft and afraid of hard is also one of the instincts of animals.
Whether it is a red ant or a blood ant, at the beginning, robbing black ants or ant eggs is only an accidental and mutated instinct, but this mutation is beneficial to the survival of the population, it will be favored by natural selection, and then over time, over time, over time, it will become the instinct of the entire population.
Many facts can show that the general situation of the same animal produced in the state of nature is extremely diverse. A few examples can also be given of the fact that some accidental, peculiar habits of a species, if beneficial to the species, can be derived from rather novel instincts through natural selection. Excerpt from On the Origin of Species
The favorable variation of instinct, under the action of natural selection, is constantly strengthened, and eventually a new instinct of universality is formed.
The instinct of bees to build nests
The bee hive must be called the most exquisite building in the world. Each honeycomb is hexagonally prismatic, tangent to each other, two layers above and below, and the bottom of each small hive is composed of 3 identical diamonds, which are similar to those accurately calculated by modern mathematicians - diamond-shaped obtuse angle 109. 28', sharp angle 70. The 32' is identical, the most material-efficient structure, and the large capacity and extremely strong have impressed many experts.
Why are bees called natural architects? Even people with architectural experience are difficult to do.
Darwin believed that natural selection guided bees to evolve in a direction of perfection, and natural selection took advantage of the slight continuous favorable variations of bees to accumulate generation by generation. And pass on the variation. The driving force of natural selection is that bees can maximize wax savings by doing so, thus stockpiling more food for winter and maintaining the number of bees needed for the population.
Bees don't know that they keep a specific distance between each other when digging up spherical bodies, just as they don't know the angles of the six-sided cylinder and the diamond plate at the bottom. The driving force of the natural selection process lies in the saving of wax; ... And through heredity, this newly acquired conservation instinct is passed on to the new swarm, so that this new generation will have the best chance of success in the struggle for survival. Excerpt from On the Origin of Species
Darwin's theory of natural selection explains the diversity and adaptability of instincts well, but the nature of instinct variation cannot be explained for the reasons of the times.
Today, we know that tiny variations in instinct stem from mutations and genetic recombination. In Darwin's time, there was no knowledge of genetics.
Nor is the life activity of animals dominated only by instincts," even in some very inferior animals of the natural hierarchy, a little judgment or reason occurs from time to time. ”
Instinct is undoubtedly controlled by genes, yet how genes control instincts and how the environment works in them. People don't know it all.
Psychologist Mai Du lonely lists 12 instincts of people. Food, rejection (rejection), renewal, escape, struggle, sex, maternal love, gregaries, domination (domination), obedience, creation, collection, and so on. It can be seen from this that some instincts are based on survival and reproduction, but the instincts created by human beings make human beings constantly discover and become stronger.
Today, although human beings have become highly intelligent, the human instincts that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years are still the driving force for us to survive, continue and explore progress.