But genes can’t talk to their animals, so instead they control them by having them run on specialized survival software.
In simple animals, the software is an automated program that runs the animal on instinct. In more complex animals, the software also includes a number of feelings—higher-level behavior-manipulation tools like pain punishments, pleasure treats, and emotion manipulations.
Imagine it as a control panel with 7 vertical sliders: HUNGER, THIRST, EXHAUSTION, HORNINESS, FEAR, PAIN, AGGRESSION.
By sliding the animal’s feelings up and down, an animal’s software uses the feelings like reins to keep the animal’s goals and the genes’ goals perfectly aligned.
All that is to say that the only purpose of genes is to survive. And they act as lines of code where each situation lead to certain action carried by the animal, if the hunger slide is up, then he knows he has to eat, if exhaustion is up, he knows he has to rest, and so on, just with the goal of surviving.