How complex is a single instinct?

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182125/

"Every complex behavior challenges us to identify its origins. How do birds know to migrate south for the winter? How do border collies know to herd sheep? How do sea turtles find their way back home to the beach on which they hatched? As a shorthand—as an aid to communication—we might talk about a migratory instinct, a herding instinct, or a homing instinct. Such labels may seem gratifying, but it is an illusory gratification. Scratch the surface of any complex, adaptive behavior and one is confronted with a seemingly endless array of hard questions spanning evolutionary and developmental time, the intricacies of ecological and social experience, and the machinations of the nervous system with its billions of neurons. The more we dive into these matters, the harder it is to settle on any clear notion of what an instinct actually is."

I want to discuss questions such as  how did all the complexities involved in reproduction and sexual instinct come about and how did they so conveniently tie in with the shapes of our male and female bodies?  When a new type of limb is created in all it's sophistication, how does the creature know how to use it and if it has to learn, how does the creature survive in the meantime?
(This post was last modified: 2019-01-11, 11:37 AM by Brian.)
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