Nipples

So humans don't follow instinctive behavior?Here are a couple of human instinctive behavior:
1. Fight or flight reflex aka survival instinct
2. Sexual drive (why do you think many humans are willing to disobey human made laws for sexual gratification?)
3. The competitive nature to win (also part of the survival instinct)
4. Altruistic behavior (which benefits that individual's survival)
5. Face perception
6. Normal bodily functions such as breathing, eating, sleeping etc.In a nutshell instinctive behavior inhances the chance of survival for that organism and in the long run survival for the entire species.Human laws are just human contrived ways of controlling large groups of people to act a certain way which in the end are ultimately derived from individual instinctive behavior. Some higher intelligent animals aka apes, marine mammals, etc also have forms of "law" akin to humans i.e. chimpanzees policing each other to ensure loyalty to there tribe/sexual companion etc.The difference between a human/animal derived law and instinct is that instinct is the inclination for a human/animal to behave a certain way due to there genetic makeup not through learned behavior. Instincts are not learned but are inherent to that individual organism, though the majority of organisms of the same species will be subject to the same instincts.The question then becomes how much control does that individual organism have of overriding that instinctive behavior. The more intelligent the animal the greater the ability of overiding those instincts but even the most intelligent animals on the Earth aka human, are still influenced by these unlearned, inherent instinctive behaviors.This is where laws come into play. Laws are learned behavior which are culturally passed down from generation to generation and are used to control the behavior of large groups of people for the benefit of society. Usually laws are used to suppress some instinctive behavior which is potentially destructive to the greater good of the rest of the population and promotes other more beneficial and altruistic instinctive behavior which benefits society. So in reality laws are merely an extention of natural instinctive behavior which are accumulated and pass down to succeeding generations.Higher intelligent animals such as apes do have some rudimentary form of social "laws" but due to their limitations in communication, limited cultural transmission from generation to generation does not produce the complexity of these "laws" which are present in modern human society.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

The only difference (behavior-wise) is the amount of control SOME humans have over there innate, instictive behavior. As shown by other posters, this difference is only in scope and degree of control over these instincts. One residue of primitive instinctive behavior that is still readily apparant in all humans is emotion i.e. anger, fear, happiness, etc.What differs between humans and the rest of the animals is the ability to communicate with greater depth of understanding to others of our same species as a result of increased gray matter and as a result the ability to pass down culture/learned behavior to our offspring which very few animals have the ability to do (and none that can readily increase this knowledge base of learned behavior successfully from generation to generation).

Not so much "better" on an individual level but more along the lines of as a species, humans have been able to (at least in the past several thousand years) to increase there collective knowledge base. Wheras accumulated culture and collective knowledge for the rest of the animal species has remained somewhat stagnant.However, from my humanist philosophy, with increased intelligence I believe comes increased responsibility to both our species and the rest of the ecosystem.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan