Instincts Smarter than All of Us

2000 mile Caribou migration photo by howstuffworks

We kind of have instincts. When we behave without thinking, such as blinking our eyes when a fast moving object approaches, or grabbing something when losing our balance. These are not involuntary muscles, like a heart pumping, but involuntary behavior. It is a healthy reaction unless you are catching falling glass "instinctively".

Distinctly, all fish, all insects, all birds, all animals of every kind have instincts. I mean an intelligent behavior that seems to exceed the intelligence of the animal. Creatures may lack intelligence compared to humans, but there seems to be compensation with ingenious instincts.

SPECIAL ABILITY INSTINCTS

Migration is a simple instinct, although many of us need a GPS. How do so many fish and birds know the way?

There is the male African weaver bird who does an amazing nest. Always, he constructs a nest just like its great, great grandparents using materials, weaves, knots, egg chamber and bottom entrance.

In experiments, several generations were removed from access to materials in a glass cage. When males finally had access to materials again, the nest building began and it was as if they had the identical blueprint as their great, great grandfathers. Tying knots, a bottom entrance. Secure and waterproof with extra padding for the hope of babies. I say hope, because the construction is the male way of wooing a female.

EQUIPMENT USE INSTINCTS

This is one level of instinct, which we could call “species programming”. However, there is another level of instinct to consider and that is how an instinct matches particular physical parts.

Human babies have the "instinct" to walk during their 1st year. They don’t search for water to swim. They don’t try to fly. Clearly, in spite of many bruises and painful falls, babies insist they can and will walk, "Instinct" matches the equipment.

Bees can not only pollinate, they are attracted to flowers, they don't harm the flowers by being too heavy, they can fly and hover AND they instinctively know they need the nectar to make honey to build their honeycomb and feed the colony.

Did you know bees have an electronic sensor to detect which flowers have already been pollinated so they don't waste time on "empty" flowers? Yeah! That's another article but you can read about it by clicking on the bee pollination picture --->

Of course, you understand the great stupidity of a mouse having instincts to build a spider web. Since a mouse does not have the equipment to make a web, it would be strange to see.

But a spider has both the instinct, the equipment and the blueprint to build a certain style of web. Nature always has a match between instinct and ability (software and hardware).

INTERDEPENDENT INSTINCTS

Hummingbird-Colibri-thalassinus by Wikipedia

Programming beyond the living species is evident with certain flowers and very specific

pollinators (birds or insects). They are inexorably connected. For example, a flower offers a "paycheck" to pollinators. The nectar is food. However, depending on the beak of the bird, nectar residing at the bottom of deep flowers with long petals is out of reach to most birds with short beaks. The hummingbird not only has a long beak, but is also instinctively

attracted to certain flowers that would be frustrating to short-beaked birds, such as the Trumpet Vine or Red Cardinal Flower.

Rather than all birds and insects fighting over the same flowers, there are many very specific matches between species. It is fascinating to learn some are by smell, some by color, some by shape and they are successfully co-dependent.

However, if a short-beaked bird was the only pollinator attracted to a deep reach nectar, both the flower and bird would soon be extinct.

SAME GOAL TO SUCCEED ON ONE IDEA?

We hear it takes millions of years but wait!

Sockeye Salmon by Lake Clark National Park Service

Back to reality details: if one fish has the idea and he dies, how did he transfer that idea to fish eggs? If he doesn’t transfer the idea, the idea is lost and some other fish has to come up with an idea and again the idea will not help his or her species unless that good idea is converted to genetic code that creates that instinct and engineers the equipment. See the problem here?

INSTINCTS SMARTER THAN THE SPECIES

AND TOO ADVANCED FOR HUMAN TECHNOLOGY

For many years scientists have worked to figure how instincts work but I want to make a big suggestion with you in this little article.

The instincts represent intelligence greater than the animal can think.

Before you think this could happen by accident, consider these details: the smartest humans today cannot figure it out how to make such programs (instincts). But evolutionists say that way before humans, these creatures (or accidents) invented new ingenious ideas.

Whoa, wait a minute. Look at this idea. "Intelligence greater than ours doing things without intelligence."

Can you really imagine a single fish deciding migration is a good idea that should be repeated in future generations?

Can you imagine that same inventive fish figuring out how to turn its new idea into a genetic code that becomes an unconscious instinct for all future generations? Me either.

1. Invent a new idea

2. Manufacture the FIRST time coding to pass on to sperm or eggs

3. Invent a way to implant the idea into DNA coding and bypass the DNA police that normally stops radical change (deformities, mutations)

Of course, if we could do that, we would. We can't. But the theory is that every single "ancient" simple life form ALL had that ability and did it! This is before computers, before calculators, before pencils!

Those 3 steps I listed would have to be done not only by every species but every part and every ability and every instinct of every species. Yikes.

INSTINCT IS “SOFTWARE PROGRAMMING”

We see amazing, incredible instincts in every form of life and those instincts is the “software”

that goes with MATCHED equipment so a spider with an instinct to spin a certain kind of web has the equipment to make the material and build with that material according to the instinct. Get it?

The same is true for nest building, food storage, how to fly, how to swim, where to go, how to hide, how to hunt. The right software for the right hardware.

How silly it would be for a fish with a web building instinct. Certain extinction if mice had the instinct to mate underwater in the ocean. Engineered equipment is useless without the instinctive training to use it and instinctive behavior is useless without the equipment to fulfill certain behavior.

Folks, "nature" has done a fabulous job of assembling high tech, function beyond anything man can do, but we’re crazy not to appreciate it, marvel at it and draw logical conclusions.

We can claim to be the smartest intellect in the universe since we don’t SEE anyone else but look at the engineering of nature, ancient technology still so advanced to our modern science that we cannot measure how far behind we are.

Just focusing on instincts, caterpillars that know when and where to make their cocoon.

Eagles that build safe nests high and out of reach. All the creatures that know how to have babies and place them near food or feed them and care for them without any special classes or reading DIY books and videos.

These instincts are not only smarter than the animals and insects, but smarter than humanity. Certainly, our science is not as advanced as the bio-tech programming required to insert into DNA these instincts working so flawlessly with MATCHED EQUIPMENT. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Logically, how do you think this is possible?

If you have no agenda or pre-disposition, accidents are never credited as superior engineers in every day life.

Animals as superior inventors than man billions of years before man is a terrible fairy tale that doesn’t deserve the status of science fiction.

So I pose these 2 questions:

1. Where does a dumb computer get intelligent software?

SUGGESTION: A programmer who is NOT dumb.

2. Where does a dumb creature get engineering and programmed behavior perfectly matched?

SUGGESTION: Any ideas?

Monarch Butterflies by Hagerty Ryan USFWS

I do not consider it a religious conclusion to see intelligence greater than man. I consider it logical.

I do consider it a religious conclusion when folks are willing to reject logic and reject what is plainly seen to reach the conclusion it is an accident requiring no intelligence to invent, assemble and orchestrate all we see in nature.

But that's me.