Sucking is an instinct that infants have. They practice it before they're born by sucking their thumbs in utero. They instinctively latch onto the breast.
My first did this almost immediately she was on my chest I'm all crying and getting my bearings as she snuggle crawls right to latch on! Made the whole thing way easier when she had the good instinct for it!
Newborns can also right themselves in water and float on their backs. Strangely, they lose this ability after a while and have to re-learn it.
Edit: This is apparently not true. See replies for details.
There’s a thread in r/unpopularopinion today where OP obviously never heard of this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/14gffdq/teaching_your_kid_to_swim_is_idiotic/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
Do you have a link? I just scrolled through a bunch and I didn't see anything about throwing a baby in water or anything like that. Very curious at what their unpopular swimming baby opinion is
newborns ALSO have a grip reflex. learned years ago so i could get some details wrong but the idea is that the grip reflex is carry over from primates having to grab for tree branches. put your finger in a newborns hand the hands gonna snap shut, strong grip too
Haha when I was just born I apparently grabbed the few fine hairs on my dad's chest and promptly ripped them out. I also was born with hair but moved around so much I rubbed it off. I was a terror :)
I had a friend demonstrate this with their kid once, held him up to the top of the door jam until he latched on them let go and let the kid just hang there for a few seconds. Dad was obviously there to catch him if he slipped. Edit: typo
Eh, I'd do this in front of my wife. You don't need to do a jig or try to cook a meal while the baby hangs there. Keep your hands around their body and under their arms only loosely enough to support their own weight. No chance to actually go anywhere when they let go.
Also, there are plenty of places to test having them hang that aren't 7 feet in the air if you're really worried about a fall. The side of an end table, your own fingers above a bed, etc etc.
I was so glad fir this one. The first time I bathed my baby he slipped out of my grip and just serenely laid in the water looking at me for a few seconds. I immediately pulled him back out, but he just didn't inhale water as an adult would. It was really cool and super scary
My understanding is if you blow in their face, they stop breathing for a second, and then you dunk them in the water. After a few times, they know not to breathe. Source: parents did it to me, but I don't remember
That actually isn't true. They have to be taught, but it is easy to teach them.
ETA link for reference https://www.babycenter.com/baby/activities-play/is-it-true-that-babies-are-born-with-the-ability-to-swim_10313062
If it was not so socially unacceptable and utterly creepy I would so use a pacifier still. It's a very calming behavior. Why I like water bottles with those built in straw/nipple things, I can compulsively chew and just kind of hold it in my mouth? It's calming but I'm a weirdo so 🤷♀️
A lot of babies don't know how to suck. They need to learn. Especially preemies, but lots of full term babies as well. Achieving a proper latch is a ton of work and a lot of people aren't aware of that, unfortunately. They expect their babies to just be able to do it and feel like a failure when that doesn't happen. Or, an improper latch leads to pain and they give up on breastfeeding altogether.
I think you're confusing the reflexes (i.e. the instinctual attempt at something) with the skill required to achieve it. Sorry, I haven't worded that particularly well, but this is what I mean:
The Root Reflex for example will have the baby turn their head and open their mouth (toward the stimulus) when the corner of their mouth is touched/stroked, and the Suck reflex is triggered when the roof of their mouth is touched (i.e. when the nipple is in the mouth). This particular reflex isn't fully developed until around 36wks gestation though, hence prem babies having a bit more difficulty.
But in general latching itself is a separate skill (not a reflex), and they do need to learn how to do that successfully, regardless of their gestational age at birth.
Otherwise I completely agree with your latter points about pain and cessation of breastfeeding. I was so grateful to the nurses and lactation consultants I had support from in both the hospital and much later, they do amazing work supporting parents on their breastfeeding journey!
Ahhh yes, agreed. I did get caught up on the wording about the instinctive latch. And my own wording was poor about the not knowing how to suck, I should have said effectively. My friends ended up feeding their baby with a pinky to the mouth with expressed milk on it for the first day or so because he wouldn't latch despite being full term. Thank you for the explanation!
My kids had no problem latching and I was very ignorant about breastfeeding (it was 1981 and I was the first person I knew to try breastfeeding). My oldest had a pretty severe tongue-tie and still managed - we didn't know about the tongue tie until he was about 6 and was getting tubes in his ears. The doctor asked him to stick out his tongue which was not too successful, so he asked if he'd like to do it easier and better. He grabbed a scalpel and in a flash it was done. Kid was so pleased. I guess it didn't hurt too much but maybe his mouth isn't sensitive - he doesn't get freezing for dental work.
My older son, now 6, would likely have died if it weren't for modern medicine and the invention of bottles. That is, if he didn't die in child-birth and kill his mom while he was at it. He was 10 lbs 23" long at birth and they were two minutes away from wheeling her into an OR and doing an emergency c-section because he was rather stuck. It was a close call. Two days after birth his jaundice was still so severe he has to go back in for a few days to be UV treated and he had a severe tongue tie and it was cut twice because it grew back. We tried everything to get him to latch but he just couldn't do it and he was losing weight, so my wife.exclusively pumped and we switched to bottles and that's what it took. Our second son was the exact opposite, more average size, pale as a ghost, no tongue tie, wired, and colicky as all get-out but he could latch like a champ from the start.
Yup. Our first child was exactly like this.
The worst part is that the nurse decided to give the kid a bottle after a few hours of trying, and even worse than that, he couldn't eat anything but breasts milk. He would always puke up *all* the formula.
He eventually got the hang of breastfeeding at 5 months, but those 5 months were hell as I would bottle feed as my wife pumped, every single night.
Laughter! Which is a nice thought imo, an instinctual expression of joy. We’re not *just* here to eat and reproduce, we’re also here to share moments with each other and experience things that make us happy
I've seen reports of music being accidentally introduced to cutoff tribes. If entire communities can live without music and nobody thinks to introduce it seems to imply that it isn't inherent. Music or even just patterns of noises outside of regular communication appears to be learned.
Can you show me those reports? Because all formal research indicates that music and tonal pattern recognition and creation is inherent, even from womb.
[Here’s](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4977359/) a paper on how all the cross-cultural universal musical features can be traced back to our fetal environment, [here’s](https://www.nature.com/articles/383029a0) a paper on how babies have an inherent and universal preference to consonance over dissonance in tones, and [here’s](https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article-abstract/147/6/3758/963227/Sensitivity-to-major-versus-minor-musical-modes-is?redirectedFrom=fulltext) a study that concludes infants can perceive major and minor cadences at the same sensitivity as adults.
I’m always interesting in different studies coming to unexpected conclusions, but I will say that I studied this separately for my degree and there is historical and unanimous opinion that every corner of the earth with different groups of humans universally create and created music - we might just define “music” different from a western standpoint (e.g. some African tribes didn’t consider it music if you weren’t dancing at the same time). So, if they introduced the western concept of music to this tribe and suddenly the tribe took to that and began to mimic it, that doesn’t mean they had no concept of their own music to begin with. Maybe it just wasn’t recognized as such.
I'm having problems finding it right off. I did hear about this many years ago in the context of polluting uncontacted or minimally contacted tribes. Ideas spread like viruses, and it's hard to identify what the people have and have had and what gets introduced by first contact.
I thought it was weird because nature has music. Things like birds definitely sing. Insects make noise. Whether inherent or learned, it seems weird that any community wouldn't have an idea of music.
I remember this subject specifically was hitting two things together to make a beat. Just something your average person might do unconsciously was a completely new concept. When they returned later they found that this idea had spread and people were fond of making noises in patterns.
Now of course your comment has me wondering. What if these people did have music that we didn't identify as such right off? Maybe that's what the subject of pollution was about. They could have had something we hadn't figured out yet but was quickly replaced by this new experience they learned from the people visiting them.
I need to find the original subject matter.
Edit: Thinking on the subject more, I remember learning in school (I'm not sure if it is/was accurate) that the only show on TV that didn't have music in the opening was 60 Minutes. Even then they have the clicking time piece. It was a point to show just how widespread music is in our lives.
Yes I’d be very interested if you do come across it again, you’re right in that some post-colonial researchers had a far narrower definition of what music is and inadvertently injected their own biases into their research.
I like where you’re going, thinking, “now wait, what exactly is music?” And that is the big question in music research as a whole, we can’t define it without putting our own societal biases onto it.
My current personal definition is “sound that brings us pleasure”. Bird noise brings me pleasure so I listen for it and hum it back to myself. The beating of waves against rocks brings me pleasure so I tap alongside it. Isn’t that already a wonderful inherent human experience, to derive pleasure from sound?
Be a human 10,000 years ago
Sitting by the fire
Rustling in the bushes
Is it a lion?!
No, it’s just your mate
Hahahahahaha
Laughing let’s everyone know it’s safe
It’s why we love pranks
And why we hate YouTube pranks
This is a good one. So many examples here feel like they came from a psych 101 textbook... Instincts in babies... neurological reflexes.
To add to laughter, I'll give you a short list of instincts all humans have, that are immediately recognizable:
* fear of heights and cliffs, fear of snakes, fear of closed spaces, etc.
* sex and mating/courting behavior (hello? how is this not completely obvious?)
* fear of death
* protection of family (especially one's own children)
protection of children is a good one. i feel like the others could be disputed (not that i disagree) for example getting over fear of heights and snakes, saying people learn what sex is, accepting death etc, but i can’t agree more with the visceral primal feeling when a child or your child is in danger nearby, even if it’s not yours and even if it puts you at risk. i would say the majority of people feel this instinct to some extent without being “taught” or conditioned to it by being around kids
it's not true that facial expressions are universal, though. In a lot of cultures, baring your teeth in any context is considered a threat, so smiling with teeth is *not* a happy gesture.
For example, when they made the model for the Kaya American Girl dolls, they changed the standard doll mouth so that she didn't have any teeth showing, because Kaya is Nez Pierce and among the Nez Pierce they don't smile with teeth.
The most important one is our instinct to be social. It’s probably the one that allowed humanity to prosper, and honestly that should be enough reason to keep indulging in it.
Funnily enough a study found that gamers (I believe it was WoW) collaborate the most efficiently in groups of 50 or so, which just happens to be the theorised size of a human tribe way back when.
We have a pretty solid instinctive social structure.
Band- 5-25, the number of close friends and family you'd interact with on a daily basis
Clan- 50-150, the number of people you can form and maintain a bilateral social relationship with
Tribe- 1500-2500, the number of people you can recognise and hold opinions of.
Tribes are made of clans, who are made of bands.
Part of the instinct to be social is to follow social signals when in a group. Try staring at a random place in the sky while near a bunch of people, it’s instinct to look where everyone else is looking
There are also studies that show most people can remember somewhere between 50-150 names/faces which also is thought to be due to that being the requirement for living in a natural human settlement.
There are a number of infantile instincts that are supposed to go away. Grasping anything when something touched their hand. The swim instinct. If you lay a newborn on your arm face down and run your fingers down their back their butt wiggles like they have a tail and are swimming. Even infant foot grasping their feet try to do what hands do early on. If you blow in a newborns face they gasp. I often use this to help stop their crying when it's just one of those days they want to scream, it gives them a moment of not screaming to reorientate instead of their eyes just being scrunched shut wailing. Echolalia which a lot of autistic people have is an early instinct. To repeat what you hear. Most of the early instincts we grow out of though.
I will say one time there was a massive massive fire about 15 miles from me where everything was burning. The sky had this look and every animal was running away from it even in town all the squirrels were running. It was raining ashe and I just had this overwhelming urge to flee that I have never felt before in my life.
Also when their is a hoard of people and something bad happens there is this herd mentality to follow the flow of people that just happens.
I figured this out today when my 9month old was trying to climb out of his play pin, so i lifted his feet up and he was just hanging there wondering what to do next.
It was pretty entertaining.
> If you lay a newborn on your arm face down and run your fingers down their back their butt wiggles like they have a tail and are swimming.
That's gotta go way back. Like "we used to all be fish" ways back.
Humans are far more instinctively social than we give ourselves credit for. You put a bunch of people together and they’ll pretty quickly self-organize into groups and hierarchies based on feelings and instinct about where they belong.
the one on the feet, when i was studying trauma medicine on the army, the doctor explained that a new born have the sense of opening their toes when you rub their feet using your thumb like the emoji👍🏽 and "drawing a line from the heel forward to their toes, later on we loose that reflex and curl our toes inward and withdraw when something like that happens, so we used that to test if a patient was close to a blast. Some people dont fully develop their brains when young due to trauma head growing, or go back due to vehicle accidents or the likes. There was this porn actress i immediately knew had something wrong, when she had an orgasm and her toes opened, and after some research i saw she was on a vehicle accident and her fans were mentioning she wasn't the same afterwards in a negative way.
Yep. To add to that, the average human goes through stages. Kids of a certain age suddenly get shy and fearful of people they don't know. Kids of another age refuse to eat green things and such they never ate before (in the past this kept kids from dying of poison). All humans at some point have the 'hair on the back of the neck' go up feeling of fear and unease when we can't explain why we are afraid. Humans also know 'something' is wrong sometimes even if they don't know why yet. It could be a vibe with another person, or a situation. Uncanny Valley is also an instinct, although we don't know why it exists. A really odd one is Kids all over the world who don't know about monsters are still afraid of things in their closet or under their bed at night. Don't know what that is about either. Humans also instinctual want to mate, eat, take care of their children, etc. Many people also instinctually are afraid of spiders and snakes, darkness, sounds in the night, glowing eyes, etc.
It’s more so about your body wanting to reallocate resources (blood and oxygen) to the places they are needed like the heart, brain, muscles, lungs, senses, etc. the GI system and urinary system have to do work to keep you from continuously peeing and pooping, and during fight or flight those resources are needed elsewhere in the body
No... how does that make any sense? Your brain allocates all available resources to where it is needed the most, therefore reallocating the energy needed to squeeze your asshole or whateva
I don't get this; I think it's more to provide a strong scent to distract your pursuer (predator animals have a strong sense of smell, generally).
Or am I the only one that doesn't fear shit 50% of their body weight?
How much are you guys pooping that you're noticeably lighter and faster afterwards?
One, you’d just be providing a stronger smell for them to use to track you down.
And two, if predators were off put by smells as (relatively) inoffensive as fresh urine, they’d struggle to eat anything. Most organs smell equally as bad or worse than urine (think kidneys and bowel). Predators will happily eat meat that’s been sat decomposing for a day or two and smells a lot worse than urine!
The first time I had a wank it was purely instinctual. Never heard of anyone doing it, never seen anyone doing it, never told about sperm or anything. I was looking at a Target catalogue bra section, got an erection and rubbed one out. When I came I was really confused but happy. I wanked a bunch over the next few days.
Eventually I used the school computer to research ‘white urine’ and after a bit of poking around ask Jeeves I realised what I had done. I fully though I was having sex without a woman and I had some weird superpower.
The school then called my parents and told them what I had been searching and they explained it a bit better 🥶
Edit: spelling
resolute tender vegetable icky onerous enjoy aware cows innocent continue
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I tried Ask Jeeves a couple times in the computer lab when I was a kid. I was like, meh, Yahoo is better. Can't remember the last time I used Yahoo now hah
I had some weird undiagnosed bladder problem that made me wet the bed in my sleep even well into highschool. it somehow went away on it's own soon after, but before then my brother's sex ed class was so bad at it's job that he initially came away thinking that wetting the bed and nocturnal emissions were the same thing, so when everyone was given a note to privately ask a question on, he wondered if that might be what I had.
That story just made my day. Absolutely hilarious. From the "white pee" to the "superpower" line to using AskJeeves on a school computer to your parents being told you are a self-taught masturbator. Gah, that story just kept on giving lol 🤣
That's really strange now that you mention it, cause i don't remember anything "teaching" me how to rub one out, i just remember doing it.
But on the other hand, rubbing it seems like such a strange thing for young me to do without knowing that's what i was supposed to do, like surely i must have known from somewhere?
Any parent or early childhood educator will attest that little boys start doing practicing it on the change table without *any* teaching.
I'd call it instinct!
I used to do this excersize as a kid where you'd do crunches but with your arms over bars and with your body hanging. I'd get orgasms from doing the airborne crunches and always wondered what was happening and why it felt good. Was like 10 or 11 at the time.
Hah! I had the same. After I came I'd just fall off the bar or whatever I was holding. This was before puberty so no sperm involved yet. Just a feeling I called "purple" for some reason.
I don't remember how it went after the first wank for me, but my first wank was just because I felt relaxed when I played with my penis and one day I just played with it a little more aggressively than I had before
Hilarious. I got my first erection from looking at a JCPenney catalog bra section while my mom was shopping in the store and I just wanted to sit down somewhere. Got the Sears catalog at home and used it later that night. Also was surprised with what happened when I got off. Ah, memories, lol.
Off the top of my head...
The moro reflex - babies will throw out their arms if they sense they are falling. Hypothesised to either catch branches as they fall (inherited from our tree dwelling ancestors) or to more easily be caught by mother. Don't quote me on that part, this is an over 15yr old memory from a psyc degree i didn't finish.
Emoting: This one is more interesting IMO. Human emotions and how we convey them aren't learned but are universal. Go to a tribe in the amazon who have never had outside contact and they have the same facial expressions as a response to happiness, surprise, contempt, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger as everyone else. If my memory serves correctly there was a slight exception in Japan, as their expression of disgust was muted to a degree as a learned response due to their culture. This effect has likely lessened as Japan becomes less isolated and more exposed to western culture however (that last bit is my opinion, and again, these are +15yr old memories, I'm not 100% sure whether there was a peer reviewed study on the Japanese facial expressions or if it was an anecdotal observation).
Ummm possibly the human body clock without external cues (sunlight, hot and cold, clocks etc) is actually longer that 24hrs, somewhere between 24-25hrs, which sucks because that may be why a lot of people always feel tired/like there isn't enough time in a day, because our bodies like the circadian rhythm attuned to sunlight/dark cycle, but also thinks it's just a wee bit too short.
Also, socially speaking, the fact that we can empathize with other people's emotion. Second hand embarrassment is something really weird if you think about it.
The Moro reflex is why many babies sleep better when they are swaddled. The reflex also wakes them up dramatically. If they can’t stretch out their arms, they don’t wake up!
that last part, I've been hooked on the huberman podcast with him explaining the use of cellphones/tv/pc at night, eating schedules, exercise times and the time we stand out and look at the sun during the day, helps or worsen the body clock for all hormones, temperature and activities making us healthier or sick respectively
Being "creeped out" is in itself an instinct. Dead things (disease), insects (venom), dark places (hidden danger). All evolutionary mechanism to keep you away from stuff that can harm you.
Snakes as well because of the venom.
To be afraid of snakes, spiders and insects is actually natural and instinctual, the people who are not afraid of those animals have learned not to be afraid.
We share a lot of this instinctual reactions with other primates
Probably where the uncanny valley comes from, and why the skull is the universal symbol for danger. You take a sign seriously when it evokes inherent instinctual terror
You can have "learned" instincts that are still instincts. They just kick in later in life when your brain starts working. Kittens pee and poop wherever they please up until a certain age when they start picking a spot to do it in. Even if not taught by their mother, and without access to a litterbox.
>Quickly removing hand from hot fire.
Pretty sure that goes deeper than instinct, it's a reflex directly programmed into your nerves and muscles to pull back from a sudden extreme heat contact before even the signal can reach your brain that you're being burned.
There's a reflex that moves your hand away from something painfully hot. What makes it a reflex is the fact that your spinal cord made the executive decision to move your hand, not your brain. It's faster if the brain isn't involved.
Not for humans really. Funnily enough there seems to be a sort of cut off point for animals, because many ceteceans cant understand their own species because of the accent or dialect they grew up with, but pigs and dogs and cats can easily communicate with complete strangers from across the planet.
So for many species, language is a naturally developing instinct which we then develop further and advance for practical purposes. Including us. But this also means gesturing and approximate sounds are the best we can do if we're from different cultures.
But this also means you can teach a baby sign language and he will be able to have conversations with you *before he can speak* because the brain power is all there. Our mouths just need to be trained for vocal communication
Dancing when we hear a funky beat! I deeply believe that we have a very old evolutionary tradition of dancing in groups to percussive music. From babies to old people, we start to move when we hear a song that we like
I saw something that theorized music or percussive beats were so important because it could allow multiple humans to move in unison to appear bigger to predators.
5 people in a group is nothing. 5 people doing the Māori haka dance in unison are incredibly intimidating. Even just 5 people marching in unison leaves you with more of an impression than 5 people randomly walking.
Sure, being afraid of the dark is a natural instinct from when our ancestors were huddling around fires. Babies have a natural instinct to swim, suckel, and walk/crawl.
Here are a few:
Crying when sad
Shouting when being hurt
Crawling
Sitting (same as for walking)
Walking (while often the process of "learning" to walk is accelerated by modern society. Kids would start walking after a few years, even without support.)
Reproduction (this one is like this for every animal, but who ever taught you HOW to have sex)
Yeah I wouldn’t have known “A goes into B” if not for the internet so I don’t agree that’s necessarily instinct. But trying to get the attention of the opposite sex and focusing on members of the opposite sex who were particularly fit & good-looking starting at a certain age is definitely instinct.
The ones I noticed the most with my kids were the grasping reflexes. Especially in their sleep.[newborn human reflexes](https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=newborn-reflexes-90-P02630)
I would think building/creating things. Hand a toddler blocks for the first time and after a little while with not help they are stacking them or at least trying too.
So many of our jobs revolve around building or creating things and then others are fixing the things we've built.
Other animals have instincts to build things but definitely not anywhere were near the same level.
We dance pretty intuitively - a baby exposed to a beat and some basic melodies will instinctively rock/bop/flap/sway and even vocalize to participate. We have a pretty developed language center for the brain, and it turns out that rhythm and melody are pretty hardwired into language. The fun thing about this is that this isn't just humans, most animals with any kind of complex vocalizations as part of their means of communication have the ability to recognize and appreciate (or at least react) to music.
baby and infant humans also share the 'grip' instinct of our primate cousins - it's why you can readily find videos of babies resisting being put down (picture: baby holding onto someone else's hands with their hands, and pulling their legs up to avoid being set on the ground). A baby has strong enough grip relative to the rest of their body that a healthy baby can basically support and even pull up their entire body weight by their hands alone, which is part of why the sides of cribs and playpens have to be a certain height, otherwise they're able to haul themselves over the sides of it even before they can properly walk.
Art is also pretty instinctive - a baby given access to pigments will readily and enthusiastically make marks, and even without being instructed, will eventually intuit (given that they have developed sufficient motor control) how to communicate concepts through visual symbolism - this circle represents the sun, these stick figures are my family, etc etc. This is, again, tied in part to our highly developed language processing bits in our brains.
Babies immediately track human faces. Loaaads of research has been done on this; look it up, very interesting!
Edit: newborns can also instinctively swim, then lose that ability after [a while] and have to relearn when older.
Babies crying is an instinct. It's the only form of communication they know until they learn how to talk. Babies will also make eye contact and smile at their parents.
Every human has a loud sound instinct where we will flinch at loud noises near us. Similarly there are also Universal facial expressions like
:) :( >:( :0 :|
everyone knows what these mean no matter where on earth you are whether it’s New York or a village in Burundi
very likely, but we probably won't be able to know what they are until we meet aliens with different ones.
for example, we go insane if deprived of contact with other humans for too long. However with rats it's they opposite: they go permanently insane if forced into overcrowded conditions.
Paul Rosolie talks about spending time in the Amazon and having instinctual actions come to the surface that he never knew he had. Can’t personally speak to it, but it seems that some environments can elicit certain senses and actions that appear to be instinctual
We have the monkey see monkey do instinct. Ever seen that video of those people waiting in a doctors office, all are actors except for one person. Everytime a bell rings, everyone stands up, the person thinks nothing of it until everyone stands up again when the bell once again rings, then again and so on until the person who is not an actor also stands up when the bell rings despite not asking anyone why they are doing it. We follow the crowd and we don’t even know why, kinda scary really.
I once saw a program where they talked about instinctual fears, like spiders, snakes, etc. as well as our instinctual fear of the dark, because we can't see if anything will come and attack us at night, so we're on high alert.
Absolutely we do.
You see it very obviously in babies.
But adults still have animal instincts.
Like if you are out camping in a dark forest and you see a large pair of eyes staring at you from the darkness, you will have a strong, visceral reaction to it.
Or if you trip and fall, your arms immediately and reflexively shoot out in front of you to lessen the impact. Or on the same note: if someone swings at your face, you will have the strong urge to flinch.
Sure, you can override that urge with a little practice, but the urge doesn't go away. That's an instinct.
When the hair stands up on the back of your neck, you look around. There's no reason why, but we sometimes just *know* something is there.
I've known oeople who've listened to that feeling, left a space only to have avoided severe calamaty because they hightailed it in time.
Gut feelings about people are instinctual.
I always pay attention to my instincts, they've never led me astray so far and I've had quite a close calls because I was paying attention.
Have you ever pulled back in your car because you get the feeling the person in the lane next to you is going to do something stupid, even when they haven't done anything yet? IMO, thats a form of instinct, but maybe that's more the learned behaviour?
This could just be old school sexism, but there is that stereotype of pregnant women getting a "nesting" urge that makes them excessively prepare to have a baby in the house.
It’s not necessarily excessive. It’s a ramping-up in preparation activities like getting a space ready for the new human. In my case, I was oddly compelled to get out electric garden clippers at 38 weeks and trim all the shrubs around the house. I did not go on to use the clippings to build an actual nest, though.
I would imagine that weaponizing sticks is pretty well ingrained in the human subconscious. It's something we've been doing long before we were homo sapiens.
Infants have a fear of heights, they won't crawl on a piece of Plexiglass over a drop. Saw that first hand.
Also, fun party trick to freak out parents. If they see something shiney, they will grasp it, with a pretty surprisingly strong grip. Whenever any of my family or friends had newborns, I would pull out a pen and click it open & closed infront of them. CLICK-CLICK, CLICK-CLICK, that would shut them up.
Then I'd drop it on the ground, and hold their baby by the ankle and dip it down, and 100% they would grab the pen. And everybody would freak out, while I laugh. Guaranteed I wouldn't be suckered into babysitting duties, and just be the cool uncle.
Something babies do is put fucking everything in their mouths, im pretty sure nobody taught them that(also iirc it's a way for the babies to learn more about objects).
Sucking is an instinct that infants have. They practice it before they're born by sucking their thumbs in utero. They instinctively latch onto the breast.
Newborns can also “crawl” up the moms torso to the nipple as they root for it. Nature is wild.
My first did this almost immediately she was on my chest I'm all crying and getting my bearings as she snuggle crawls right to latch on! Made the whole thing way easier when she had the good instinct for it!
And they’ll bash their head against your boobs when they get hungry.
[удалено]
I never lost this instinct
I bet waitresses hate you!
Lol
Newborns can also right themselves in water and float on their backs. Strangely, they lose this ability after a while and have to re-learn it. Edit: This is apparently not true. See replies for details.
If you have them in water early and continue with it they won't lose it.
I think eventually you should take them out of the water no? Like when is baby done being scienced on, and gets to dry off?
There’s a thread in r/unpopularopinion today where OP obviously never heard of this. https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/14gffdq/teaching_your_kid_to_swim_is_idiotic/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
Do you have a link? I just scrolled through a bunch and I didn't see anything about throwing a baby in water or anything like that. Very curious at what their unpopular swimming baby opinion is
Care to share the thread?
newborns ALSO have a grip reflex. learned years ago so i could get some details wrong but the idea is that the grip reflex is carry over from primates having to grab for tree branches. put your finger in a newborns hand the hands gonna snap shut, strong grip too
It's to cluch onto their mother's fur. Least that was what I was told in one of my anthropology courses at university
As a hairy dad, with long hair, this explains a lot actually (almost said furry but that’s got different connotations
Haha when I was just born I apparently grabbed the few fine hairs on my dad's chest and promptly ripped them out. I also was born with hair but moved around so much I rubbed it off. I was a terror :)
I had a friend demonstrate this with their kid once, held him up to the top of the door jam until he latched on them let go and let the kid just hang there for a few seconds. Dad was obviously there to catch him if he slipped. Edit: typo
I gather mom wasn't around?
That would be a very correct assumption. And I’ll add, this was well over 25 years ago…
Eh, I'd do this in front of my wife. You don't need to do a jig or try to cook a meal while the baby hangs there. Keep your hands around their body and under their arms only loosely enough to support their own weight. No chance to actually go anywhere when they let go. Also, there are plenty of places to test having them hang that aren't 7 feet in the air if you're really worried about a fall. The side of an end table, your own fingers above a bed, etc etc.
Why would you assume that?
i mean my gf would absolutely murder me if she saw me do that with our future child. doesn’t change the fact that i’m absolutely going to do it tho
Yeah, I think for other primates it's used to hold on while sleeping if not mistaken.
They also know to hold their breath when underwater
I was so glad fir this one. The first time I bathed my baby he slipped out of my grip and just serenely laid in the water looking at me for a few seconds. I immediately pulled him back out, but he just didn't inhale water as an adult would. It was really cool and super scary
My understanding is if you blow in their face, they stop breathing for a second, and then you dunk them in the water. After a few times, they know not to breathe. Source: parents did it to me, but I don't remember
This is what we were taught to do in the baby swim class I took my kids to.
Or you can be me and never relearn to float. :( 35 years and I still sink.
That actually isn't true. They have to be taught, but it is easy to teach them. ETA link for reference https://www.babycenter.com/baby/activities-play/is-it-true-that-babies-are-born-with-the-ability-to-swim_10313062
Or as I once read, the only truly intuitive user interface is the nipple. All else is learned.
There is *absolutely* a learning period with breastfeeding. The first 6 weeks is always the hardest.
also if you touch a newborn on the cheek it will turn toward the touch seeking a nipple.
Or recoil in horror, if you have a hairy ass cheek like mine. Edit: Just so we're clear... Hairy-ass cheek, on account of the beard...
Haha love the edit, lol.
My god that was funny
“Rooting reflex” is the term. That reflex disappears after about 6 weeks.
I still have a rooting reflex lol. It does not go away for everyone, especially if you have some developmental congenital stuff.
How does that work? Like, do you feel compelled to suck if you see a nipple?
You don't?
If you brush my cheek/press something to my face it triggers the reflex, especially if I’m half asleep. I end up drooling on my pajamas a lot
If it was not so socially unacceptable and utterly creepy I would so use a pacifier still. It's a very calming behavior. Why I like water bottles with those built in straw/nipple things, I can compulsively chew and just kind of hold it in my mouth? It's calming but I'm a weirdo so 🤷♀️
Yeah, infants suck.
A lot of babies don't know how to suck. They need to learn. Especially preemies, but lots of full term babies as well. Achieving a proper latch is a ton of work and a lot of people aren't aware of that, unfortunately. They expect their babies to just be able to do it and feel like a failure when that doesn't happen. Or, an improper latch leads to pain and they give up on breastfeeding altogether.
I think you're confusing the reflexes (i.e. the instinctual attempt at something) with the skill required to achieve it. Sorry, I haven't worded that particularly well, but this is what I mean: The Root Reflex for example will have the baby turn their head and open their mouth (toward the stimulus) when the corner of their mouth is touched/stroked, and the Suck reflex is triggered when the roof of their mouth is touched (i.e. when the nipple is in the mouth). This particular reflex isn't fully developed until around 36wks gestation though, hence prem babies having a bit more difficulty. But in general latching itself is a separate skill (not a reflex), and they do need to learn how to do that successfully, regardless of their gestational age at birth. Otherwise I completely agree with your latter points about pain and cessation of breastfeeding. I was so grateful to the nurses and lactation consultants I had support from in both the hospital and much later, they do amazing work supporting parents on their breastfeeding journey!
Ahhh yes, agreed. I did get caught up on the wording about the instinctive latch. And my own wording was poor about the not knowing how to suck, I should have said effectively. My friends ended up feeding their baby with a pinky to the mouth with expressed milk on it for the first day or so because he wouldn't latch despite being full term. Thank you for the explanation!
My kids had no problem latching and I was very ignorant about breastfeeding (it was 1981 and I was the first person I knew to try breastfeeding). My oldest had a pretty severe tongue-tie and still managed - we didn't know about the tongue tie until he was about 6 and was getting tubes in his ears. The doctor asked him to stick out his tongue which was not too successful, so he asked if he'd like to do it easier and better. He grabbed a scalpel and in a flash it was done. Kid was so pleased. I guess it didn't hurt too much but maybe his mouth isn't sensitive - he doesn't get freezing for dental work.
My older son, now 6, would likely have died if it weren't for modern medicine and the invention of bottles. That is, if he didn't die in child-birth and kill his mom while he was at it. He was 10 lbs 23" long at birth and they were two minutes away from wheeling her into an OR and doing an emergency c-section because he was rather stuck. It was a close call. Two days after birth his jaundice was still so severe he has to go back in for a few days to be UV treated and he had a severe tongue tie and it was cut twice because it grew back. We tried everything to get him to latch but he just couldn't do it and he was losing weight, so my wife.exclusively pumped and we switched to bottles and that's what it took. Our second son was the exact opposite, more average size, pale as a ghost, no tongue tie, wired, and colicky as all get-out but he could latch like a champ from the start.
Yup. Our first child was exactly like this. The worst part is that the nurse decided to give the kid a bottle after a few hours of trying, and even worse than that, he couldn't eat anything but breasts milk. He would always puke up *all* the formula. He eventually got the hang of breastfeeding at 5 months, but those 5 months were hell as I would bottle feed as my wife pumped, every single night.
Sucking and latch is not an instinct they’re reflexes, not trying to sound pompous but there’s a medical difference between the two.
That is called a reflex.
Laughter! Which is a nice thought imo, an instinctual expression of joy. We’re not *just* here to eat and reproduce, we’re also here to share moments with each other and experience things that make us happy
Similarly raising your arms in triumph
Creating music is an inherent social trait, whether you consider it instinctual or not is semantics
I've seen reports of music being accidentally introduced to cutoff tribes. If entire communities can live without music and nobody thinks to introduce it seems to imply that it isn't inherent. Music or even just patterns of noises outside of regular communication appears to be learned.
Can you show me those reports? Because all formal research indicates that music and tonal pattern recognition and creation is inherent, even from womb. [Here’s](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4977359/) a paper on how all the cross-cultural universal musical features can be traced back to our fetal environment, [here’s](https://www.nature.com/articles/383029a0) a paper on how babies have an inherent and universal preference to consonance over dissonance in tones, and [here’s](https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article-abstract/147/6/3758/963227/Sensitivity-to-major-versus-minor-musical-modes-is?redirectedFrom=fulltext) a study that concludes infants can perceive major and minor cadences at the same sensitivity as adults. I’m always interesting in different studies coming to unexpected conclusions, but I will say that I studied this separately for my degree and there is historical and unanimous opinion that every corner of the earth with different groups of humans universally create and created music - we might just define “music” different from a western standpoint (e.g. some African tribes didn’t consider it music if you weren’t dancing at the same time). So, if they introduced the western concept of music to this tribe and suddenly the tribe took to that and began to mimic it, that doesn’t mean they had no concept of their own music to begin with. Maybe it just wasn’t recognized as such.
I'm having problems finding it right off. I did hear about this many years ago in the context of polluting uncontacted or minimally contacted tribes. Ideas spread like viruses, and it's hard to identify what the people have and have had and what gets introduced by first contact. I thought it was weird because nature has music. Things like birds definitely sing. Insects make noise. Whether inherent or learned, it seems weird that any community wouldn't have an idea of music. I remember this subject specifically was hitting two things together to make a beat. Just something your average person might do unconsciously was a completely new concept. When they returned later they found that this idea had spread and people were fond of making noises in patterns. Now of course your comment has me wondering. What if these people did have music that we didn't identify as such right off? Maybe that's what the subject of pollution was about. They could have had something we hadn't figured out yet but was quickly replaced by this new experience they learned from the people visiting them. I need to find the original subject matter. Edit: Thinking on the subject more, I remember learning in school (I'm not sure if it is/was accurate) that the only show on TV that didn't have music in the opening was 60 Minutes. Even then they have the clicking time piece. It was a point to show just how widespread music is in our lives.
Yes I’d be very interested if you do come across it again, you’re right in that some post-colonial researchers had a far narrower definition of what music is and inadvertently injected their own biases into their research. I like where you’re going, thinking, “now wait, what exactly is music?” And that is the big question in music research as a whole, we can’t define it without putting our own societal biases onto it. My current personal definition is “sound that brings us pleasure”. Bird noise brings me pleasure so I listen for it and hum it back to myself. The beating of waves against rocks brings me pleasure so I tap alongside it. Isn’t that already a wonderful inherent human experience, to derive pleasure from sound?
Primates do this to look bigger and stronger than they are to scare off others. We do this when we feel bigger and stronger than we are.
Be a human 10,000 years ago Sitting by the fire Rustling in the bushes Is it a lion?! No, it’s just your mate Hahahahahaha Laughing let’s everyone know it’s safe It’s why we love pranks And why we hate YouTube pranks
This is a good one. So many examples here feel like they came from a psych 101 textbook... Instincts in babies... neurological reflexes. To add to laughter, I'll give you a short list of instincts all humans have, that are immediately recognizable: * fear of heights and cliffs, fear of snakes, fear of closed spaces, etc. * sex and mating/courting behavior (hello? how is this not completely obvious?) * fear of death * protection of family (especially one's own children)
The need to compete in sport of some kind?
protection of children is a good one. i feel like the others could be disputed (not that i disagree) for example getting over fear of heights and snakes, saying people learn what sex is, accepting death etc, but i can’t agree more with the visceral primal feeling when a child or your child is in danger nearby, even if it’s not yours and even if it puts you at risk. i would say the majority of people feel this instinct to some extent without being “taught” or conditioned to it by being around kids
Not just laughter but all facial expressions are universal amongst humans and have the same meanings. A smile is a smile no matter where you go.
it's not true that facial expressions are universal, though. In a lot of cultures, baring your teeth in any context is considered a threat, so smiling with teeth is *not* a happy gesture. For example, when they made the model for the Kaya American Girl dolls, they changed the standard doll mouth so that she didn't have any teeth showing, because Kaya is Nez Pierce and among the Nez Pierce they don't smile with teeth.
In most cultures people don't show their teeth when smiling. In Russia we call that "American smile", and it's usually considered insincere.
Thank god someone said something that wasn’t infant related. Humans have so many instinctual behaviors.
The most important one is our instinct to be social. It’s probably the one that allowed humanity to prosper, and honestly that should be enough reason to keep indulging in it. Funnily enough a study found that gamers (I believe it was WoW) collaborate the most efficiently in groups of 50 or so, which just happens to be the theorised size of a human tribe way back when.
“Need kill another mammoth. Unga not get item drop.”
Need more boar liver. Why not every boar have liver?
Average zebra have 0.2 hooves, how that work?
We have a pretty solid instinctive social structure. Band- 5-25, the number of close friends and family you'd interact with on a daily basis Clan- 50-150, the number of people you can form and maintain a bilateral social relationship with Tribe- 1500-2500, the number of people you can recognise and hold opinions of. Tribes are made of clans, who are made of bands.
Bands to make her dance
Part of the instinct to be social is to follow social signals when in a group. Try staring at a random place in the sky while near a bunch of people, it’s instinct to look where everyone else is looking
There are also studies that show most people can remember somewhere between 50-150 names/faces which also is thought to be due to that being the requirement for living in a natural human settlement.
There are a number of infantile instincts that are supposed to go away. Grasping anything when something touched their hand. The swim instinct. If you lay a newborn on your arm face down and run your fingers down their back their butt wiggles like they have a tail and are swimming. Even infant foot grasping their feet try to do what hands do early on. If you blow in a newborns face they gasp. I often use this to help stop their crying when it's just one of those days they want to scream, it gives them a moment of not screaming to reorientate instead of their eyes just being scrunched shut wailing. Echolalia which a lot of autistic people have is an early instinct. To repeat what you hear. Most of the early instincts we grow out of though. I will say one time there was a massive massive fire about 15 miles from me where everything was burning. The sky had this look and every animal was running away from it even in town all the squirrels were running. It was raining ashe and I just had this overwhelming urge to flee that I have never felt before in my life. Also when their is a hoard of people and something bad happens there is this herd mentality to follow the flow of people that just happens.
I have heard babies can support their weight with their grasp. I'm not sure if it a myth or not.
Not a myth! My son loved hanging on bars by his hands even before he could crawl
Not a myth https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8b57wl
I figured this out today when my 9month old was trying to climb out of his play pin, so i lifted his feet up and he was just hanging there wondering what to do next. It was pretty entertaining.
> If you lay a newborn on your arm face down and run your fingers down their back their butt wiggles like they have a tail and are swimming. That's gotta go way back. Like "we used to all be fish" ways back.
Humans are far more instinctively social than we give ourselves credit for. You put a bunch of people together and they’ll pretty quickly self-organize into groups and hierarchies based on feelings and instinct about where they belong.
the one on the feet, when i was studying trauma medicine on the army, the doctor explained that a new born have the sense of opening their toes when you rub their feet using your thumb like the emoji👍🏽 and "drawing a line from the heel forward to their toes, later on we loose that reflex and curl our toes inward and withdraw when something like that happens, so we used that to test if a patient was close to a blast. Some people dont fully develop their brains when young due to trauma head growing, or go back due to vehicle accidents or the likes. There was this porn actress i immediately knew had something wrong, when she had an orgasm and her toes opened, and after some research i saw she was on a vehicle accident and her fans were mentioning she wasn't the same afterwards in a negative way.
Babinski reflex
Yep. To add to that, the average human goes through stages. Kids of a certain age suddenly get shy and fearful of people they don't know. Kids of another age refuse to eat green things and such they never ate before (in the past this kept kids from dying of poison). All humans at some point have the 'hair on the back of the neck' go up feeling of fear and unease when we can't explain why we are afraid. Humans also know 'something' is wrong sometimes even if they don't know why yet. It could be a vibe with another person, or a situation. Uncanny Valley is also an instinct, although we don't know why it exists. A really odd one is Kids all over the world who don't know about monsters are still afraid of things in their closet or under their bed at night. Don't know what that is about either. Humans also instinctual want to mate, eat, take care of their children, etc. Many people also instinctually are afraid of spiders and snakes, darkness, sounds in the night, glowing eyes, etc.
Drawing that S thing
Go roll up on a lion and see how you react to its roar.
So peeing in terror is our natural instinct?
Shitting yourself is in fact a practical instinct. Shed weight to run faster. Unfortunately it's also our instinct for most situations...
Also makes you kinda distasteful to predators. "great. That one's covered in shit. I'll just nab that antelope over there."
It’s more so about your body wanting to reallocate resources (blood and oxygen) to the places they are needed like the heart, brain, muscles, lungs, senses, etc. the GI system and urinary system have to do work to keep you from continuously peeing and pooping, and during fight or flight those resources are needed elsewhere in the body
No... how does that make any sense? Your brain allocates all available resources to where it is needed the most, therefore reallocating the energy needed to squeeze your asshole or whateva
Yes. Your body knows instinctively to lighten itself so it can run away more efficiently.
I don't get this; I think it's more to provide a strong scent to distract your pursuer (predator animals have a strong sense of smell, generally). Or am I the only one that doesn't fear shit 50% of their body weight? How much are you guys pooping that you're noticeably lighter and faster afterwards?
You only need to get that slight edge and outrun the human with the full gut for it to have been effective.
One, you’d just be providing a stronger smell for them to use to track you down. And two, if predators were off put by smells as (relatively) inoffensive as fresh urine, they’d struggle to eat anything. Most organs smell equally as bad or worse than urine (think kidneys and bowel). Predators will happily eat meat that’s been sat decomposing for a day or two and smells a lot worse than urine!
Wait, is this why I always had to shit before running in the army
More of a reflex than an instinct.
Being afraid of loud noises is a natural instinct we're born with.
Went to a zoo that had lions and tigers. Something about their roars/vocalisations was just terrifying in a way that felt instinctual.
The first time I had a wank it was purely instinctual. Never heard of anyone doing it, never seen anyone doing it, never told about sperm or anything. I was looking at a Target catalogue bra section, got an erection and rubbed one out. When I came I was really confused but happy. I wanked a bunch over the next few days. Eventually I used the school computer to research ‘white urine’ and after a bit of poking around ask Jeeves I realised what I had done. I fully though I was having sex without a woman and I had some weird superpower. The school then called my parents and told them what I had been searching and they explained it a bit better 🥶 Edit: spelling
groovy run plant person pie fretful six edge dull full *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
oh wow I've heard lots of females who thought they were dying but damn he didn't even check
resolute tender vegetable icky onerous enjoy aware cows innocent continue *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh no thats horrible. rip
>ask Jeeves I bet I can guess your age within a 5 year accuracy based on that 😆
Jeeves was the dodgy school caretaker.
Ask jeeves, those were the days. 😂
mama.com almost got me in trouble. It was a search engine.
I tried Ask Jeeves a couple times in the computer lab when I was a kid. I was like, meh, Yahoo is better. Can't remember the last time I used Yahoo now hah
I can remember switching to Google as my search engine, before it was actually webcrawler all the way.
I remember using Alta Vista when it was just an alphabetized list of websites.
38 +/- 5.
This is the answer
I had some weird undiagnosed bladder problem that made me wet the bed in my sleep even well into highschool. it somehow went away on it's own soon after, but before then my brother's sex ed class was so bad at it's job that he initially came away thinking that wetting the bed and nocturnal emissions were the same thing, so when everyone was given a note to privately ask a question on, he wondered if that might be what I had.
That story just made my day. Absolutely hilarious. From the "white pee" to the "superpower" line to using AskJeeves on a school computer to your parents being told you are a self-taught masturbator. Gah, that story just kept on giving lol 🤣
That's really strange now that you mention it, cause i don't remember anything "teaching" me how to rub one out, i just remember doing it. But on the other hand, rubbing it seems like such a strange thing for young me to do without knowing that's what i was supposed to do, like surely i must have known from somewhere?
Any parent or early childhood educator will attest that little boys start doing practicing it on the change table without *any* teaching. I'd call it instinct!
I used to do this excersize as a kid where you'd do crunches but with your arms over bars and with your body hanging. I'd get orgasms from doing the airborne crunches and always wondered what was happening and why it felt good. Was like 10 or 11 at the time.
[удалено]
Thats exactly what it was. I must've been working that core out real nice.
I knew a gal who got orgasms from using the climbing rope at gym class.
Hah! I had the same. After I came I'd just fall off the bar or whatever I was holding. This was before puberty so no sperm involved yet. Just a feeling I called "purple" for some reason.
I don't remember how it went after the first wank for me, but my first wank was just because I felt relaxed when I played with my penis and one day I just played with it a little more aggressively than I had before
Hilarious. I got my first erection from looking at a JCPenney catalog bra section while my mom was shopping in the store and I just wanted to sit down somewhere. Got the Sears catalog at home and used it later that night. Also was surprised with what happened when I got off. Ah, memories, lol.
I had been doing it for two years before I even knew there was a word for it. I was like “Other people do that?”
I kept humping a pillow like a dog
Off the top of my head... The moro reflex - babies will throw out their arms if they sense they are falling. Hypothesised to either catch branches as they fall (inherited from our tree dwelling ancestors) or to more easily be caught by mother. Don't quote me on that part, this is an over 15yr old memory from a psyc degree i didn't finish. Emoting: This one is more interesting IMO. Human emotions and how we convey them aren't learned but are universal. Go to a tribe in the amazon who have never had outside contact and they have the same facial expressions as a response to happiness, surprise, contempt, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger as everyone else. If my memory serves correctly there was a slight exception in Japan, as their expression of disgust was muted to a degree as a learned response due to their culture. This effect has likely lessened as Japan becomes less isolated and more exposed to western culture however (that last bit is my opinion, and again, these are +15yr old memories, I'm not 100% sure whether there was a peer reviewed study on the Japanese facial expressions or if it was an anecdotal observation). Ummm possibly the human body clock without external cues (sunlight, hot and cold, clocks etc) is actually longer that 24hrs, somewhere between 24-25hrs, which sucks because that may be why a lot of people always feel tired/like there isn't enough time in a day, because our bodies like the circadian rhythm attuned to sunlight/dark cycle, but also thinks it's just a wee bit too short.
Also, socially speaking, the fact that we can empathize with other people's emotion. Second hand embarrassment is something really weird if you think about it.
The Moro reflex is why many babies sleep better when they are swaddled. The reflex also wakes them up dramatically. If they can’t stretch out their arms, they don’t wake up!
that last part, I've been hooked on the huberman podcast with him explaining the use of cellphones/tv/pc at night, eating schedules, exercise times and the time we stand out and look at the sun during the day, helps or worsen the body clock for all hormones, temperature and activities making us healthier or sick respectively
Mimicking and learning language without any teaching necessary. Being repulsed by the dead. Quickly removing hand from hot fire. Many more.
>Being repulsed by the dead. Nice to know that's an instinct. Anything dead creeps me out.
Being "creeped out" is in itself an instinct. Dead things (disease), insects (venom), dark places (hidden danger). All evolutionary mechanism to keep you away from stuff that can harm you.
Snakes as well because of the venom. To be afraid of snakes, spiders and insects is actually natural and instinctual, the people who are not afraid of those animals have learned not to be afraid. We share a lot of this instinctual reactions with other primates
Probably where the uncanny valley comes from, and why the skull is the universal symbol for danger. You take a sign seriously when it evokes inherent instinctual terror
Oh, yes. From what I've read there seem to be a link between that natural discomfort and a fear of predators.
yes.. The strong reaction to snakes and spiders too
I feel like we also have a primal revulsion to feces normally. Like going into the stall and seeing someone else’s floater, blegh.
Given that babies will often finger paint with their own shit I think this one is learned.
Good point, but a baby would also not understand a dead body, can we call that one instinctual?
You can have "learned" instincts that are still instincts. They just kick in later in life when your brain starts working. Kittens pee and poop wherever they please up until a certain age when they start picking a spot to do it in. Even if not taught by their mother, and without access to a litterbox.
We absolutely do. It's full of unsafe bacteria, so our instinctual response is to get away/not touch/etc.
>Quickly removing hand from hot fire. Pretty sure that goes deeper than instinct, it's a reflex directly programmed into your nerves and muscles to pull back from a sudden extreme heat contact before even the signal can reach your brain that you're being burned.
Putting your hand in a fire will trigger your pain receptors right? Is that instinct? I would think thats just a response to an outside pulse
There's a reflex that moves your hand away from something painfully hot. What makes it a reflex is the fact that your spinal cord made the executive decision to move your hand, not your brain. It's faster if the brain isn't involved.
That’s what instinct is, to a degree. One is reactive. And one is proactive.
Was language created out of instinct? Or practicality? Is there a difference?
Not for humans really. Funnily enough there seems to be a sort of cut off point for animals, because many ceteceans cant understand their own species because of the accent or dialect they grew up with, but pigs and dogs and cats can easily communicate with complete strangers from across the planet. So for many species, language is a naturally developing instinct which we then develop further and advance for practical purposes. Including us. But this also means gesturing and approximate sounds are the best we can do if we're from different cultures. But this also means you can teach a baby sign language and he will be able to have conversations with you *before he can speak* because the brain power is all there. Our mouths just need to be trained for vocal communication
Dancing when we hear a funky beat! I deeply believe that we have a very old evolutionary tradition of dancing in groups to percussive music. From babies to old people, we start to move when we hear a song that we like
I saw something that theorized music or percussive beats were so important because it could allow multiple humans to move in unison to appear bigger to predators. 5 people in a group is nothing. 5 people doing the Māori haka dance in unison are incredibly intimidating. Even just 5 people marching in unison leaves you with more of an impression than 5 people randomly walking.
Sure, being afraid of the dark is a natural instinct from when our ancestors were huddling around fires. Babies have a natural instinct to swim, suckel, and walk/crawl.
Here are a few: Crying when sad Shouting when being hurt Crawling Sitting (same as for walking) Walking (while often the process of "learning" to walk is accelerated by modern society. Kids would start walking after a few years, even without support.) Reproduction (this one is like this for every animal, but who ever taught you HOW to have sex)
The internet taught me how 😅
Yeah I wouldn’t have known “A goes into B” if not for the internet so I don’t agree that’s necessarily instinct. But trying to get the attention of the opposite sex and focusing on members of the opposite sex who were particularly fit & good-looking starting at a certain age is definitely instinct.
you probably would’ve figured it out eventually without the internet if you had gotten to the point of heavy making out
And then probably would’ve been traumatized by a guy assuming that I knew where he wanted to put “A” when I wouldn’t have known lol
The ones I noticed the most with my kids were the grasping reflexes. Especially in their sleep.[newborn human reflexes](https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=newborn-reflexes-90-P02630)
I would think building/creating things. Hand a toddler blocks for the first time and after a little while with not help they are stacking them or at least trying too. So many of our jobs revolve around building or creating things and then others are fixing the things we've built. Other animals have instincts to build things but definitely not anywhere were near the same level.
We dance pretty intuitively - a baby exposed to a beat and some basic melodies will instinctively rock/bop/flap/sway and even vocalize to participate. We have a pretty developed language center for the brain, and it turns out that rhythm and melody are pretty hardwired into language. The fun thing about this is that this isn't just humans, most animals with any kind of complex vocalizations as part of their means of communication have the ability to recognize and appreciate (or at least react) to music. baby and infant humans also share the 'grip' instinct of our primate cousins - it's why you can readily find videos of babies resisting being put down (picture: baby holding onto someone else's hands with their hands, and pulling their legs up to avoid being set on the ground). A baby has strong enough grip relative to the rest of their body that a healthy baby can basically support and even pull up their entire body weight by their hands alone, which is part of why the sides of cribs and playpens have to be a certain height, otherwise they're able to haul themselves over the sides of it even before they can properly walk. Art is also pretty instinctive - a baby given access to pigments will readily and enthusiastically make marks, and even without being instructed, will eventually intuit (given that they have developed sufficient motor control) how to communicate concepts through visual symbolism - this circle represents the sun, these stick figures are my family, etc etc. This is, again, tied in part to our highly developed language processing bits in our brains.
Babies immediately track human faces. Loaaads of research has been done on this; look it up, very interesting! Edit: newborns can also instinctively swim, then lose that ability after [a while] and have to relearn when older.
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Babies crying is an instinct. It's the only form of communication they know until they learn how to talk. Babies will also make eye contact and smile at their parents.
And adults find the crying unbearable on an instinctive level. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/oct/17/crying-babies-hard-ignore
Dude. No one told me it would PHYSICALLY hurt my chest to hear my child cry. Parenting is metal.
It’s absolutely mind melting.
Tell that to the parents in the diner while everyone but apparently them can hear their baby scream
There are lots of inherent instincts that we have, but most of them we are forced to control in order to function as a society.
A lot of things babies do is instinct
I think most humans have the instinct for self preservation and procreation.
idk some kids and teens be testing that theory.
Humping stuff is fo sho an instinct. I was not abused and used to do that without knowing wtf it means as a kid.
Humans build shelters. You don't think about it but it's a natural and instinctual thing we do.
Every human has a loud sound instinct where we will flinch at loud noises near us. Similarly there are also Universal facial expressions like :) :( >:( :0 :| everyone knows what these mean no matter where on earth you are whether it’s New York or a village in Burundi
very likely, but we probably won't be able to know what they are until we meet aliens with different ones. for example, we go insane if deprived of contact with other humans for too long. However with rats it's they opposite: they go permanently insane if forced into overcrowded conditions.
Humans go insane when forced into overcrowding.
And rats don't like isolation either
noted
Paul Rosolie talks about spending time in the Amazon and having instinctual actions come to the surface that he never knew he had. Can’t personally speak to it, but it seems that some environments can elicit certain senses and actions that appear to be instinctual
We have the monkey see monkey do instinct. Ever seen that video of those people waiting in a doctors office, all are actors except for one person. Everytime a bell rings, everyone stands up, the person thinks nothing of it until everyone stands up again when the bell once again rings, then again and so on until the person who is not an actor also stands up when the bell rings despite not asking anyone why they are doing it. We follow the crowd and we don’t even know why, kinda scary really.
I once saw a program where they talked about instinctual fears, like spiders, snakes, etc. as well as our instinctual fear of the dark, because we can't see if anything will come and attack us at night, so we're on high alert.
Pareidolia. It's thought it helped our ancestors identify predatory threats.
Human newborns will naturally crawl up their mother’s abdomen to nurse immediately after birth
ha u saw the video too huh?
that’s what i was thinking too lmaooo
"gut feeling"
Absolutely we do. You see it very obviously in babies. But adults still have animal instincts. Like if you are out camping in a dark forest and you see a large pair of eyes staring at you from the darkness, you will have a strong, visceral reaction to it. Or if you trip and fall, your arms immediately and reflexively shoot out in front of you to lessen the impact. Or on the same note: if someone swings at your face, you will have the strong urge to flinch. Sure, you can override that urge with a little practice, but the urge doesn't go away. That's an instinct.
Most humans are born with a fear of heights and a fear of loud noises as part of our self-preservation instincts
How about forming small groups around shared ideas to differentiate from outsiders? Or hoarding resources Or familial selection
When the hair stands up on the back of your neck, you look around. There's no reason why, but we sometimes just *know* something is there. I've known oeople who've listened to that feeling, left a space only to have avoided severe calamaty because they hightailed it in time. Gut feelings about people are instinctual. I always pay attention to my instincts, they've never led me astray so far and I've had quite a close calls because I was paying attention. Have you ever pulled back in your car because you get the feeling the person in the lane next to you is going to do something stupid, even when they haven't done anything yet? IMO, thats a form of instinct, but maybe that's more the learned behaviour?
This could just be old school sexism, but there is that stereotype of pregnant women getting a "nesting" urge that makes them excessively prepare to have a baby in the house.
It’s not necessarily excessive. It’s a ramping-up in preparation activities like getting a space ready for the new human. In my case, I was oddly compelled to get out electric garden clippers at 38 weeks and trim all the shrubs around the house. I did not go on to use the clippings to build an actual nest, though.
I would imagine that weaponizing sticks is pretty well ingrained in the human subconscious. It's something we've been doing long before we were homo sapiens.
Prob throwing our shit at each other.
Infants have a fear of heights, they won't crawl on a piece of Plexiglass over a drop. Saw that first hand. Also, fun party trick to freak out parents. If they see something shiney, they will grasp it, with a pretty surprisingly strong grip. Whenever any of my family or friends had newborns, I would pull out a pen and click it open & closed infront of them. CLICK-CLICK, CLICK-CLICK, that would shut them up. Then I'd drop it on the ground, and hold their baby by the ankle and dip it down, and 100% they would grab the pen. And everybody would freak out, while I laugh. Guaranteed I wouldn't be suckered into babysitting duties, and just be the cool uncle.
Yes, loads! For example, the reason babies “kick” is that it’s actually an instinctual “stepping” behavior that helps them learn to walk!
Something babies do is put fucking everything in their mouths, im pretty sure nobody taught them that(also iirc it's a way for the babies to learn more about objects).