What describes instinctive behavior in animals?

Instinctive behavior refers to innate actions that occur naturally in response to specific stimuli in the environment. These behaviors are not learned but are instead hardwired into an animal's biology, often facilitating survival and reproduction. For example, a newborn duckling knows to follow its mother after hatching, demonstrating instinctive behavior triggered by the sight and sound of the mother duck.

While learned behaviors, adaptive behaviors, and those shaped by training also play important roles in an animal's life, they involve a degree of experience or environmental influence that is absent in instinctive behaviors. Instinctive behaviors tend to be immediate and consistent across individuals of a species, reflecting an evolutionary advantage that has been preserved over time. This makes them essential for tasks such as finding food, escaping predators, and mating.