Animal Behavior

A moth flying into a porch light is not choosing death. Moths steer by keeping a distant light source, normally the moon, at a fixed angle to their flight path. A porch light is close, so that fixed-angle rule spirals the moth inward. That is a stimulus triggering a fixed response, not a decision. This is the core distinction the topic tests: an innate behavior is inherited, appears fully formed without practice or copying, and runs the same way across every member of a species. A learned behavior changes with individual experience: a dog that sits on command learned it; a dog flinching at a loud noise did not. You can tell them apart in one animal by isolation: raise it alone, with nothing to imitate, and see if the behavior still shows up correctly.

The honeybee waggle dance is innate communication, and it is a map. A bee dancing on the vertical comb substitutes gravity for the sun's position: the angle of her straight run, measured from straight up, tells hive mates the direction to food relative to the sun's current bearing. The run's duration encodes distance, longer run means a farther patch. No bee was taught this; it is wired in.

This connects to migration and seasonal timing. Many migrators key their departure to day length, a cue that stays fixed year to year regardless of climate. But the food they are chasing, like caterpillar hatches, is keyed to temperature, which is shifting earlier as springs warm. Fixed innate cues meeting a shifting environment is why timing mismatches grow over time.