By definition, an instinct is a behavior that does not have to be learned, shows almost no variation between members of its species, and manifests in a rigid sequence of behaviors performed in response to stimulus. It's also called a fixed action pattern, or FAP. In bears and pigeons, hibernation and homing are instincts. In some species, caring for newborns is instinctive.
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A rat has a maternal instinct. So, too, does the grayback goose, who immediately pushes any round object near her nest inside to incubate it, no matter if it is a billiard ball placed there by an impish ethologist or an actual egg. Round object (stimulus) produces rolling behavior (response). The less intelligent an animal, the more its survival depends on instinct.
In contrast, almost every aspect of primate behavior is mediated by a larger and more developed brain. Evolution has equipped us with a neocortex that requires us to learn in order to survive. With a neocortex, biology remains relevant but is no longer determinant. Natural selection ultimately favored flexibility. Animals that can rapidly adapt to shifting conditions have an advantage over those that can survive only a narrow range of circumstances.
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The neocortex allows flexibility, but the loss of instinct also comes at a cost. Charles Snowdon, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, has spent his career studying marmosets and tamarins, cooperatively breeding New World monkeys. In most groups of tamarins, the young help to take care of babies, while in a minority of groups, they do not have this opportunity. In a field study of tamarins without prior infant-care experience, Snowdon and his team discovered that babies born to first-time parents never survived. They guessed that naive mothers and fathers didn't know enough either to parent on their own or to accept help from more experienced kin.
Later, from comparative data, his team discovered that the survival rate was much better in groups where young siblings helped out with babies. Across primates, infants born to inexperienced parents have higher risk of death. Snowdon explains, "When they don't have experience with infant-care skills, there's a very low breeding success rate. Parenting skills are learned. They're not innate, for males and females equally. Both are clumsy parents. [...] You have to learn to share care of your baby[...]"
- Darcy Lockman (All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership, pages 71, 71-72, 73-74). Slightly reformatted to avoid wall of text, bolded emphases added.
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