I am a father of a 10 months old son. I love to observe my son acquiring and developing new skills like crawling, responding to questions, imitating. Moreover, I was flabbergasted when I witnessed my son operating TV remote.

As a recent development, I observed a new skill in him yesterday. He crawls on carpet freely with out any problem, he enjoys it. Yesterday, we (me and my wife) wanted to see how does he respond crawling in grass. We left him in the middle of a small grass field. I think he felt the grass poking his palm and knees and then to our surprise, we saw him for the first time standing him straight up without any support and stood up for at least 20 seconds and then carefully come down to a sitting position maintaining the balance. Our jaw dropped with that sight. I could not believe that my son stood up without our or any thing's support. With that event, I totally forgot to capture the sight in my phone. I waited for 15 more minutes after that with my phone camera on, to capture the same sight again but all in vain. He did not like the grass to crawl on, in the first attempt I guess.

Now my questions are:

• How and when infants & toddlers create or develop the "survival instinct"? By survival instinct, I meant, for example, my son wanted to avoid the grass and instantly he got the instinct or a reflex to stand up.

• Is this behavior part of genetics of Homo Sapiens?

• I am curious to know what else kids/infants/toddlers learn from instinct which was never taught to them?

I am a father of a 10 month old son. I love to observe my son acquiring and developing new skills like crawling, responding to questions, and imitating other's behavior. Moreover, I was flabbergasted when I witnessed my son operating our TV remote.

As a recent development, I observed a new skill in him yesterday. He crawls on carpet freely with out any problem, he enjoys it. Yesterday, we (my wife and I) wanted to see how he would respond to crawling in grass. We left him in the middle of a small grass field. I think he felt the grass poking his palm and knees and then ,to our surprise, we saw him for the first time standing himself straight up without any support and stood up for at least 20 seconds and then carefully came down to a sitting position, maintaining the balance. Our jaw dropped with that sight. I could not believe that my son stood up without our or any thing's support. With that event, I totally forgot to capture the sight in my phone. I waited for 15 more minutes after that with my phone camera on to try capture the same sight again, but all in vain. He did not like the grass to crawl on, in the first attempt I guess.

Now my questions are:

• How and when do infants & toddlers create or develop the "survival instinct"? By survival instinct I mean my son wanted to avoid the grass and instantly he got the instinct or a reflex to stand up.

• Is this behavior part of the genetics of Homo Sapiens?

• I am curious to know what else kids/infants/toddlers learn from instinct which was never taught to them?