Why Animals Have to Learn Their Instincts
Rethinking nature and nurture
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We often talk as if instincts arrive fully assembled, like apps preinstalled at birth. But even the most iconic, “hard-wired” behaviors have to be practiced and honed.
Exhibit A: This baby gorilla, earnestly attempting to beat his chest, only to discover that mastery - like evolution itself - proceeds by trial, error, and the occasional undignified tumble.
Here’s what I wrote about the role of learning in the development of adaptations in my book The Ape That Understood the Universe:
Why, though, do people think that, according to evolutionary psychologists, everything is down to genes? Part of the problem is the widespread assumption that, if a trait is an adaptation, it must therefore be a product of nature rather than nurture, genes rather than learning. This assumption is seductive but false. In many cases, learning is part of the developmental program that installs the adaptation. A good example concerns play-fighting in kittens. Play-fighting looks like fun. It is fun. But it’s also a serious business, because it helps the animal to develop its species-typical hunting and fighting skills. It’s easy to imagine genes that bias feline development in such a way that kittens are naturally inclined to jump around and play. These genes were presumably selected because jumping and playing stimulated the development and fine-tuning of the animals’ hunting and fighting skills. Thus, hunting and fighting are adaptations – they’re there because selection favored them - but they’re also partly learned. Learning plays a crucial role in many human adaptations as well, including kin altruism, incest avoidance, and language.
Update - 8 January 2026
A reader asked whether it’s fair to say that, while instinctive behaviors have to be learned, the desire to perform those behaviors is unlearned. Here’s my response:
As a first approximation, I think that’s probably right: Instinctive behaviors are learned as a result of unlearned instinctive desires.
It’s possible, though, that if we could a microscope to the neural underpinnings of the desires, we’d find that things aren’t quite so tidy. The initial desire could be quite vague and inchoate, and could itself be honed as the behavior starts to develop. In other words, the desire and the behavior may develop in concert with one another.
Logically, though, there must be some unlearned starting point, or the whole process could never get off the ground.
You can read the first chapter of The Ape That Understood the Universe for free here.
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Personality Change in the Teen Years
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Sex Differences in Empathy Across Cultures
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12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.
If a behavior or even a desire for a behavior is an instinct then it is by definition not "learned".
Just because a behavior has to be practiced for proficiency doesn't mean its a "learned" behavior. Human infants don't "learn" how to walk, they just get up and do it after a certain amount of time. No one really "learns" how to have sex, they just do it at some point after becoming an adult, etc.
The comparison to Language doesn't work either. Particular languages are learned but the ability to create and speak languages is itself innate. Also, distinct Languages, Dialects and even Accents reflect the nature of the people who created them.
Hi Steve. Watching the little gorilla it seemed to me that there were two factors displayed: 1) the desire/need/urge (!?) to perform the chest thumping and b) the physical competence required. Developing the second factor is something that all complex animals undergo: human infants require practice reliably to locate their thumb in relation to their mouth. But does the desire/need/urge need to be learned?