Ken, this is the argument, precisely. The SBs would argue that despite the experiment, it's all in the genes dontcha know? They reject nurture as being a key to species surival and betterment. Susan Oyama from NYC ws a fellow at Otago when I was there, and she was a Stephen Jay Gould agreer (rather than disciple). She had literally dozens of SB papers in which analysis of the results ran along the lines of if A then B. And, intuitively, therefore, C as well. And the next one would quote the first paper's C conclusion as gospel and they all went on their merry way. We were set a task to find psychology foraging theory papers using the same approach towards proof. I think that between the class of 20 or so of us, we found one that was slightly suspect. It was certainly a good way to get us to read a ridiculous number of monumentally boring papers, that's for sure.
I don't know whether nature overpowers nurture, but I suspect, with no proof, that the higher up the food chain a creature is, the more impact that nurture will have on its personal survival and, by derivation, its potential to contribute to the gene pool. Therefore, you are probably quite right when you say that honey bee behaviour is almost certainly genetically programmed - although you could probably also argue a case that some of the "dance steps" that they use to describe a nectar find are learned from their peers. Dunno, and don't really care all that much! But you could equally argue that if a human tried to survive on instinct alone and what it could discover for itself, it would soon be a very dead human.
I find all animal "altruism" suspect. Even when you see cooperation among animals - witness the cute little meerkat lookout system and the "uncle" and "aunt" childminding services - I'm pretty sure I'm looking at something to which the animals are genetically predisposed. The actual task may be learned from parents and peers, but the drive to do it is "instinctive". The same argument applies to dogs minding children.
Rationalise it how you will, if you have lived with animals (and I suppose we all have), you see a mixture of things instinctive - the reason, for instance, that we can housetrain dogs and cats is that their mothers teach them not to foul their own nests in the wild. All you are doing is defining the nest boundary. But you wouldn't even be able to do that if the animal didn't have the drive to do it anyway - and things learned. But there are limits to what they will easily learn. Try teaching a dog not to dump on the lawn. I know you can't; I've tried with all of my dogs and never, ever succeeded. Why? Well, the animal psychs tell us that it is a matter of what is underfoot (sorry, that's substrate in dog-shrink speak). Dogs seem to prefer grass - ordirt or gravel - over asphalt if they can find it. I know how upset my dogs always are/were when they had to dump or even piddle on the footpath. They'd hunt around for as long as they could hold on to avoid doing that.
My query about the cat feeding the dead dog wasn't intended to be a "cutesy" anecdote. It actually happened, and it has bugged me ever since, because it runs completely counter to what I believe I know about animal behaviour (not that I think I'm an expert). Of course, we have anthromorphised it to some extent - the two animals were firm friends - but cats simply do not do that kind of thing. It shouldn't even occur to them. SO WHY?
