Many reflexes in new-born babies disappear as they get older. This includes the Moro (startle) reflex and the fencing reflex, where the baby turns its head and lifts one arm. After these early reflexes disappear, movement tends to be increasingly subject to volition (although innate behaviours are still important).
It’s actually an interesting question, whether inherited behavior can be modified based on experience. I do not know what has been done since. I don’t even know what behavior is learned by very simple animals. The aplysia experinment of Kandel suggests all animals can learn. However, some behavior seems pretty fixed. An insect would not attempt a new way to use its wings to fly.
It’s just so weird to me that you would think that this is even in question.
We obviously have a strong instinctive urge for sex, for example, but we don’t just start humping anything that looks about right. The underlying innate motivation is no doubt just as strong for a human as it is for a dog, but the details of what we actually do are hugely modified by learning and circumstances and reasoning and integrated with other partially-conflicting objectives (themselves all with innate and learned and reasoned contributing factors).
With the vast majority of behavior we should not be thinking in terms of discrete specific behaviors like “do a mating dance”. We (and all non-human animals to varying degrees) have myriad instinctive objectives/tendencies, encoded as neural reward functions, and we constantly integrate these partially-conflicting innate objectives with each other and with learning and reasoning.
ETA: and I really should not imply that dogs are some kind of archetype for sex-with-anything-that-moves. In the natural environment of a wolf pack, you can be sure that there are very strict rules and etiquette for controlling and modifying your sex drive to appropriate partners in appropriate circumstances.
I appreciate the correction. I’ve long thought that human behavior is more like that of other animals than people tend to realize, and a lot of “civilization” is just window dressing for our natural inclinations. Your comments have reminded me of that notion.