Instinct is Power

My parrot has been domesticated for the majority of his life. Because of his instincts he has enough guidance that he needs to survive, besides the fact that is is daily presented with fresh food and water, and a few juicy snacks that he would otherwise probably never come across had he been in the wild. He hides from airplanes which shows his fear from larger predators, and he has built a little cave out of his feathers and stuffed toys up on the top storey of his aviary, using it as his bedroom each night. He weaves his sleek green body through the tunnels underneath a blue teddy bear and a stuffed killer whale and makes his way in and out swiftly and can remain unseen and unheard whilst hiding. All this he knows from his sense of instinct. That is the power of it. It is stronger than knowledge because knowledge is merely passed on. 

When I first was gifted him, I thought he was a female because of his behaviour. He is overly protective of his cage, he does not allow anyone to touch him unless he is in the mood to be handled by humans, and he did not talk much - at least, at the start. Then we plucked four large feathers from his rear-end and sent them off to a laboratory which specialises in DNA testing, and they sent us back a certificate deeming him a male. From that moment on, everything became weird. Why was he insistent on building a nest when he did not need it? Why was he fussy whenever anyone touched him each time he did not feel like it? But I did not question his lack of speaking anymore, because there came a lack of shutting up. His feathers began to brighten, and he began to scream a little too much in the mating seasons. All of this gender peculiarity, though, faded when I realised that instinct was at play.

And what an ingenious thing it is. All night last night I kept thinking about if humans and animals had their roles reversed, how humans would barely survive because they do not have that animal instinct. I think many cavemen and women died off by falling off a cliff, or by getting a little too close to the fire. One fine more modern example is that of Genie, or feral child, the little girl who was locked in a room for around thirteen years by her father, experiencing a large dose of social isolation. One interesting thing about Genie was an instance where she was left in a bathtub, assuming she knew when to turn off the hot water - she did not. She sat there burning in the tub and did not know due to no exposure of what society deemed 'hot' and 'cold' that the hot water was hurting her body. She simply could not feel pain, and because of the left side of her brain failing to develop due to the lack of communication, she stayed that way.

This makes me think that without technological advances and without language, and without anything else that makes us who we are, humans would be left with nothing, not even instinct, and it is that shedding of society, of all modernity that differentiates us from animals, that places animals above us in that instance. All of what I am saying are merely claims due to un-researched things. however I simply cannot get over how intelligent my bird is. And to think we negate their abilities to think.