Food search behaviors are primitive, but not instinctual. We repeat whatever behavior satisfies our hunger. This is negative schedule immediate reward reinforcement. (The bad thing continues until the behavior occurs, and then stops as an immediate consequence of the behavior. This is the most effective behavioral conditioning circumstance.) Infants get hungry, really hungry, in a matter of hours at most. They learn from a few dozens of iterations that crying brings food.
Later in life, they are fed other things than mother’s milk. In our species, the infant behavior of mouthing is most frequently quickly extinguished since it is not generally associated with success in obtaining food. In other species, mouthing, gnawing, and similar behaviors are retained as general behaviors, with both positive and negative consequences, but the immediacy of hunger appeasement makes it very hard to extinguish once establish. Once the habit of behavior is established, the absence of hunger has no effect on the frequency of the behavior, without a specific undesirable consequence. (The baby cries whether it is hungry or not. It then learns other consequences of crying, and modifies its crying behavior according to its perception. One of these consequences is the eventual adult’s self image, and ability to engage emotionally with others. Intelligence complicates behavior.)
In the adult human, hunger causes a desire for the things that our minds have learned to associate with the satisfaction of hunger. Food is defined early in life, and most people must learn the behavior of trying new foods, over the specific bias of our early training. Some never do. Animals are generally less discriminatory about food, especially in cases where artificially produced food is their habitual fare.
Predation is a suite of behaviors only tangentially associated with hunger. Grazing starts with indiscriminant eating, and is shaped by stimuli. Deadly poisons are generally very unpleasant, a fact of natural selection and billions of years of evolution by both plants, and those that prey upon them. Hunting and killing of animal prey is almost entirely learned behavior, although at the most primitive level, such as insect predation, it is reflex behaviors selected by survival, and has the consequence of speciation among insects on the sole basis of food sources.
Among carnivores, food source is much more adaptable, but more dangerous. Because of this, the pressure to develop nurture is greatly enhanced, and extends into adulthood of the progeny and into social groups, like packs, and tribes. Herbivores tent to herd for defense, carnivores group for predation. Humans group for a multiplicity of reasons, since their behavior has had thousands of generations to adapt to the complications of intelligence, and language. Like all human behaviors, hunger, and eating are far more complicated than in other species. Some will die in the presence of food for entirely social, or ethical reasons. Some will not.
Tris
