@ozarkram
OK... so I'm going to give you 2 different examples of instinct that I witnessed 1st hand with two different pets of mine. I feel like these examples are a little more than instinct. These were in my mind (along with others too) when I said what I did earlier about the mammoths.
Just remember,,, you asked for this. LOL
The first one will be something from my parrot. I have a male Vosmaeri eclectus. I hand fed him from the day after he hatched out of his egg. So, he never spent any time with his parents or even other parrots. All he knows... he's learned from living with us and our dogs through the years (He'll be 13 next month).
Something I discovered early on in his life was that he loved to eat chicken. That may seem kinda cannibalistic... but believe it or not, many birds seek out protein and actually will go to town on it when presented with the opportunity. He loves fried eggs too but that's another story that I won't get into.
Early in his life I would give him pieces of chicken all the time. It was obvious that he really enjoyed it. I would just pick off a human bite sized piece of my chicken and give it to him... it was always just the meat at first. Then, one day I had made a mountain of chicken wings... there was a big bowl of the discarded wing bones that still had scraps of chicken meat attached to the them. I decided to just put a small handful of these bones into Rasta's bowl and let him pick the meat off of them rather than just throw them straight into the trash. I knew he would love to eat the chicken meat.
Well,,, I was very surprised at what I saw almost immediately after I gave him these bones. He was sitting on his perch on our bar area right next to where we were eating. I was watching him closely since I had never given him a chicken bone like this and I wanted to see what he would do. He's normally very timid and nervous about anything he's never seen before. When I put these wing bones in his bowl... he stared at them for a minute or so without touching them. I figured he was freaked out and wasn't going to eat the meat because they looked so different from what he was used to. That's not what happened.
After staring at them for at least a minute... he then lurched down and grabbed one of the chicken wing bones in his beak. I was really surprised to see him do this because it was such a new thing for him. So now I'm expecting him to start eating all of the chicken meat off of the bones since he loves it so much. That's not what happened at all though. Instead, he grabbed the first bone he could and proceeded to crack the thing open with a precision that I thought must have been an accident. He is not the kind of parrot that chews, some are big time chewers of everything... but he never does. He split this chicken wing bone perfectly in half. Then,,, he ate out the bone marrow like a lion on a fresh kill. I had never seen him eat anything in his life with this kind of extreme savagery. It was almost shocking. He then cracked every single bone in his bowl with the exact same precision and consumed all the the bone marrow like it was his last meal.
He had never seen this behavior from anything in life. He instantly bypassed the chicken meat that he loves and went straight for the marrow by cracking the bone like he had been doing it for his whole life. I can still remember how fascinated I was by his immediate actions to these bones that he had never been exposed to in his life. Bone marrow is a "super meal" for animals in the wild. Somehow he knew this all on his own.
My second example happened with my dog/pup. We have a new dog who is about 15 months old now. We got him from a very well known breeder who basically has a giant second house for her breeding dogs and pups. Super high end operation. These dogs are pampered big time. This second "house" isn't a house that was built for humans... it was built for the dogs... but it is nicer than many people's homes. So our boy spent the 1st 8 weeks of his life there with his mother and the breeder and nobody else or outside noises or interference... they are isolated from almost everything but the momma and breeder.
We picked him up from there as soon as he turned 8 weeks old and brought him to his real home. So, we've been his only real parents and we've exposed him to almost everything for the 1st time.
At our house... almost no one ever comes through our front door. All of our friends and family come through our garage. We almost never get unexpected guests... and as a result... our front door is almost never a point of entry for anyone. That means nobody,,, and I mean NOBODY,,, ever rings our doorbell. It never happens.
So one day we are all in the living room watching TV. Our pup is on the couch with us and he is probably about 4 months old at this point. A commercial comes on the TV and has a doorbell ring as part of the commercial. My dog has NEVER HEARD a doorbell in his entire life. This doorbell sound came directly from the TV... and the TV is now where close to, or in the direction of, my front door. It was perfectly clear that the doorbell sound came directly from the TV and that is the opposite direction from my front door. My dog reacted in a very strange way immediately after hearing this doorbell....
He leaped up immediately and let out this weird bark that we'd never heard him use before, ran to our front door, and started jumping up against it while barking in this new weird way. He somehow instantly knew that the doorbell sound meant that someone was at our front door (THIS WAS HIS FIRST TIME EVER HEARING A DOORBELL SOUND). He was acting like he wanted to go through the front door to get at whoever might be on the other side. This dog is the sweetest dog ever... he wouldn't do anything except greet a perfect stranger like his long lost best girlfriend and kiss them to death. We simply couldn't believe his reaction to this sound it was so out of character.
Meanwhile... there is no one at our front door at all. It's just the sound of a doorbell coming from the opposite end and direction of the house. But Judah runs "screaming" for the front door and doesn't stop until we open the door to show him there is nobody there. It was really fascinating to watch happen. We all still laugh about that because we saw it happen. He somehow instantly knew that a doorbell sound meant someone was trying to come into our house through the front door. A sound that he had never heard before from a door that is almost never used. That crap was somehow in his brain from birth,,, no other way to explain it.
That was the short version of both stories btw. LOL.
